


Meet Me in the Woods

by glaciya



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (or is he), All the found family vibes, Curses, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Minor Allura/Lance (Voltron), Romelle & Keith's friendship, Shiro: I exist only to be a good alpha and love keith; and im on a break from being a good alpha, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Werewolf Shiro (Voltron), Werewolves, Witches, all of them - Freeform, and other background pairings but its mainly sheith, human keith, oblivious boys in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-02-18 11:55:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18699121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glaciya/pseuds/glaciya
Summary: In which Keith moves to a small town to start a new life. And somehow that new life involves magic and supernatural creatures, and a man that's both strange and familiar, and inexplicably drawn to Keith.----“Wow he’s awful friendly with you,” the woman says, cocking her head at Keith and eyeing him curiously.“Is he not like this with everyone?” Keith asks, feeling his face heat up when Shiro leans down to nuzzle into his hair. “Allura said it was normal?”The woman squacks out a laugh and opens her mouth to say something before the man covers her mouth with his palm.“It’s normal,” the man says much too quickly. “My sister here is just a troll.”Keith doesn’t believe him but he’s too distracted by the large, muscular, affectionate man pining for his attention to really do much about it. He gently pushes Shiro back so they can make eye contact. “Hello, Shiro.”“Keith,” Shiro rumbles back at him, voice apparently still hoarse from disuse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> So this fic came about because I've been wanting to write a longer sheith fic for a long time now, and I've always loved the "Human in a werewolf pack" stories so I decided do my own with this pairing. I want it to be mostly happy, with Keith accidentally worming his way into Shiro's fractured pack and helping them while finding out more about his heritage from his mother. And also falling helplessly in love in the process ;) 
> 
> Updates are going to be slow for now just because my schedule is a lil busy right now, but please be patient with the updates and I hope you enjoy the read!
> 
> Also, this fic has a whole playlist for it if you're interested in like, folky, supernatural sounding stuff...if this makes sense lol  
> You can check it out [here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5M1dHedDXfKOHrA7hEaUN5)

It’s dark by the time Keith pulls into the narrow gravel drive leading up to his cabin. Still the headlights of his truck shine bright, lighting up the front porch and the sign that rests above it.

WELCOME HOME, it says in sloppy childish writing. The M and E in home are tiny compared to the rest, from when six-year old Keith overestimated how much room he had left to carve on the wood board. His father had taken one look at it and deemed it perfect, nailing it front and center, so it’d be the first thing any of the cabin’s visitors would see.

Keith’s chest aches.

The cabin hasn’t had any real visitors in years, not since Keith’s last visit with his father the summer before he turned fifteen, and it shows. The windows are fogged over with grime, the red paint on the door is scraped, and the second step from the top is broken in. The repairs will keep Keith plenty busy for months to come.

He gives himself a full song to brace himself, letting the smooth rhythm wash over him as memories of time spent here come back to life; memories of carving out the sign while his father painted the door behind him; his father roasting marshmallows over a campfire while telling Keith whispered stories about a mysterious woman his father stumbled upon during a hike that had to be his mother; memories of a teen boy that lived in the large cabin across the pond and up the hill, with a smile nearly as wide as his face the day he successfully taught Keith how to swim in the pond that separated their homes.    

The song ends, and Keith needs to get a move on unpacking. He’d only brought necessities and items he holds dear, but the air is thick with humidity and the clouds cover the moon and stars. It’s going to storm soon, and Keith knows the porch gets slick when it rains.

On his last trip to the truck, Keith chances a look at the cabin across the pond from him. It’s just as huge as he remembers; at least three stories with a two story porch stretching around the side and back of the first two stories and more large windows than wood walls. It’s Keith’s only neighbor, the rest of their lands surrounded by wilderness.

Keith’s sure most people would say his run down two bedroom looks harsh in comparison and Keith, surrounded by bittersweet memories and cozy comfort, would disagree with each and every one of them.

Lights flick on in one of the rooms on the second floor, drawing Keith’s attention. He spots a man slide open a large screen door to step out onto the deck, immediately starting to pace back and forth along the length of it. Keith can’t make out too many of the man’s features from this distance, but he can see that he’s average height and lean, with a bright orange hoodie and tan khakis. His hands continuously fly up to his mousy brown hair as he paces, pulling at it. He’s agitated about something.

The box in his hands starts to slip and Keith shifts, plates clinking inside the box as he adjusts his grip. Across the pond, the man on the porch freezes mid-stride and turns to the railing to stare at Keith.

Caught, Keith freezes.

At first, neither of them move. Keith thinks maybe the man doesn’t notice him, he’s not standing under the reach of his porchlight so he could very well be covered in shadow. Then the man waves at him, arm stretching high over his head and swinging back and forth in exaggerated movements so there’s no way Keith wouldn’t see him.

Keith only nods, since he hands are full. “Awful friendly for a guy that just caught someone staring at him,” Keith mutters, knowing the man can’t hear him. “I would’a flipped me off at least.”  He turns and walks into his house, ignoring the paranoia that the laughter he hears behind him has something to do with him.

Once Keith and the stack of boxes Keith brought with him are inside, he takes the time to look around. The front of the cabin is open, leaving no walls to separate the living room to his right and the diningroom and kitchen on his left. He’s thankful he’d thought to make a few calls last week to have the utilities turned back on and the cabin cleaned and aired out. Once the lights flick on, he can see an alarmingly thick layer of dust on the plastic cover over the couch in the livingroom and can only imagine how bad the rest of the place looked before.

The hallway directly in front of him leads straight to the master bedroom, with the first door on the right opening to the bathroom and laundry, and the second door leading to Keith’s old room.

There’s a set of stairs behind the fireplace to a spacious loft. Keith plans on using that area as his bedroom rather than sleep in one of the bedrooms. His old room would be too small and it would feel strange to use his father’s old room. He’ll enjoy watching the stars under the sunroof in the loft anyway.

For tonight though, he blows up a twin size air mattress in the center of his living room, unpacking just enough to find his blankets, pajamas, and his dagger-a short wickedly curved blade made of silver with unfamiliar purple designs in the handle; the only thing his mother had left behind when she left.

The cabin feels safe and comforting as it always has but still, Keith keeps it by his side as he falls asleep.

_________________

The dream  starts off the same every time. Keith’s in a forest, it’s night, and the full moon looms in the sky above him, silver and impossibly huge.

He’s running-away or towards something, he doesn’t know- and his legs ache with the strain he puts on them, trying to weave through the trees faster and faster still.

There’s heat behind him, causing sweat to drip down his neck and along his spine, and he can see a blur of orange light flickering in the corner of his vision.

And the _noises_ around him. Keith hears what sounds animals, too many for Keith to count, sprinting along the forest beside and in front of him. Sometimes he catches a blur of something impossibly huge and furred running as it disappears into the trees ahead.

One of them is behind him, the heavy steps getting louder and louder as it closes in on him.  The howl always startles him, makes him stumble a bit and allows the creature behind him to catch up enough that it’s hot breath moves the hair on the back of his head.

This should scare him, but it doesn’t.

This dream usually ends there, with him waking, out of breath with sweat damp sheets surrounding him, never having the courage to twist to find out what it is behind him.

Tonight he turns and the thing right behind him crashes into him, sending them both tumbling down onto the forest floor. He lands on his back, wheezing at the weight pressing against his torso.

At first all he can see is a mass of black fur covering his entire field of vision. Then the thing on top of him moves, pressing a paw nearly as big as Keith’s head into the dirt and slowly rising to full height above him.

From this angle Keith has a clear view of the white underbelly of the beast, the new knowledge that the beast is most definitely male, and the scars across his nose and right shoulder, where one of his legs is missing.

When he mind finally makes sense of what he’s seeing he can’t help the moan of shock that escapes past his lips. The wolf-he has to be a wolf, even though he’s closer to the size of a bear- echoes the sound in  a deep rumbling grunt as he shakes himself. It stills and it’s eyes blink open, grey eyes staring wide at Keith as if he’s just as shocked as Keith is.

Again, Keith should be scared but finds himself almost comforted by the weight of the wolf over him. He reaches toward the wolf thoughtlessly, pausing as the wolf bares his teeth at him. When the wolf doesn’t immediately bite his hand off, Keith presses his palm lightly on the scar that stretches across his nose.

The wolf flinches at first touch but, after a tense moment, closes his eyes and pushes into Keith’s hand. Keith chuckles, scratching lightly at the soft fur in between the wolf’s eyes. He opens his mouth to say a praise, a greeting, something, but he never gets the chance.

Another howl cuts through the air from ahead of them, high and sharp. A warning.

Keith and the wolf startle away from each other, both looking around frantically to find the threat. Keith finds it first, suddenly aware again of the orange glow that gets brighter with each passing second, of the heat now so intense that he finds it hard to breathe.

There’s fire spreading through the forest in the opposite direction Keith was running earlier. The flames are tall enough that they kiss the sky as it consumes the forest.  It must have been what he was trying to get away from.

In face of the monster that killed his father, Keith finds his fear then. It freezes him in place even as the flames threaten to touch his feet, the heat from them burning at his heels. He knows he should but he can’t make his body move. This is why his consciousness knew he should never look behind him all the times he’s had this dream before. It knew, just like in real life, he couldn’t handle the sight of it. People aren’t supposed to die in their dreams but, as fire catches on his foot, Keith knows death is coming for him now.

The snap of teeth right next to the side of his head makes him yelp, jerking him out of his trance. The wolf snaps again, grabbing a mouthful of Keith’s shirt and tugging with enough strength that he drags Keith further away from the flame, whining all the way.

This gets Keith moving, crawling at first and then stumbling to his feet at more snaps at his hands from the wolf and side by side they run, away from the destruction of the forest.

______________

Keith wakes panting, shivering, and surrounded by damp sheets.

He scrambles blindly for his phone beside him, squinting at the numbers until he can read the time. Three Thirty-Three am. October Twenty-Third.

“Happy birthday to me,” he mutters, pushing himself up and off the twin mattress. He has to piss and his mouth is dry.  

He’s too tired to give much thought to the electric charge in the air. Too wary from the dream to notice the hair on the nape of his neck rising as he stumbles into the bathroom, fists scrubbing sleep out of his eyes. But it’s there, in the back of his mind, a warning in instincts. He’s being watched.

The bathroom works its way to the top of Keith’s growing list of upgrades needed for his father’s cabin. It feels cramped in a way it never had when Keith was just a child with hardly any room for a now fully grown Keith among the appliances. This wouldn’t bother him all too much on it’s own, but the toilet gurgling ominously as it drains and the sink sputtering an inconsistent water pressure while Keith washes his face solidify its place on the chopping block.

Keith shivers when he steps back out into the hall, a cool breeze piercing through the thin cloth of his pajamas. The chill on the wood floor makes his feet ache and it makes him want to rush back toward the living room where his bed and thick blankets are waiting for him.

Only, he’s awake enough now to think of how strange it is for there to even be a breeze in the first place. Awake enough to notice how brightly lit the cabin is, despite the fact that Keith never bothered to turn any of the lights on when he got up. Awake enough to pay attention to the warning blaring loud and clear within his bones, telling him he’s not safe.

The breeze is coming from behind him. Keith turns toward it, pulse so fast that it threatens to beat it’s way out of his skin, and stares down the hallway, into his father’s old room. The door to the room wasn’t open before Keith went to bed, he’s sure of it, but it’s open now. What’s more alarming is that the door beyond that, the one on the far wall that leads onto the back porch, is open too.

He can see the silver moonlight from the moon creeping into his cabin. He watches the wind rustle low hanging branches before it kisses his skin moments later. The lack of barriers between him and what’s outside unsettles him, makes him lock up at first. Then it hits him. The realization that right now the danger isn’t what’s outside lurking in the woods, it’s what could be inside the cabin with him that he needs to be worrying about.

This gets Keith moving, not away from the open door but toward it-a combination of frightened curiosity and little concern for his own safety he’ll later reason with himself. He only takes three steps before he freezes in place again at the low creaking of the floorboards, startling him into a halt.

The floorboards creak again and it can’t be Keith because he isn’t moving, and that means there must be-

A shadow appears between Keith and the back door, right at the entrance to his father’s room.  

It’s a man, Keith realizes, still frozen mid-step. A large man that takes up most of the doorway with his broad shoulders and long legs. Shaggy hair hangs down in his face and past his shoulders, black with a shock of white in his bangs. His shirt is ripped in more places than not, showing off scarred skin underneath, and the right sleeve hangs limp off the side of his shoulder where he’s missing an arm. There’s mud all over his jeans and his feet are bare, toes curling into the wood and making it creak again as Keith stares.

A friendly visit from Keith’s neighbors across the pond is out of the question, given the time and the intrusion. No, this man must be from the forest behind Keith. He’s as wild as it’s other inhabitants.

Even his breathing is a bit wild, deep inhales and tiny exhales through his nose and his face is scrunched up in a grimace, eyes squinted shut, as if he can’t get enough air.  Maybe he’s hurt, Keith thinks and then, when the wild man starts to growl he thinks, maybe not. It’s a rumbling thing, a deeper sound than Keith’s ever heard a man make. It vibrates Keith to his bones.

Keith takes a step back and the man’s eyes open like a shot, finding Keith’s instantly. For a second, Keith sees a flash of violet in the man’s eyes, but when it fades into a dark steely grey Keith reasons it must have been a trick in the shadows. The man takes a step forward and Keith decides he has more important things to worry about anyway.

Keith answers him with another step backward, wanting to keep his distance.

The man shows his displeasure by growling again and flashing white, too sharp teeth at him. His next step forward is at a faster and longer stride and Keith doesn’t wait around to watch his advance.

He twists around on his heel and runs, thinking both of the front door straight ahead and his dagger, laying beside his bed, ahead and to his left. There’s a loud thud of footsteps and the press of an invisible weight at his back as the man somehow closes the distance between them at an impossible speed. Keith turns left, knowing he doesn’t have much time before the man is on him and wanting to be armed when it happens.

Keith never makes it to his dagger. It’s a close thing, he can see it and his fingers are reaching out to grab it when the man crashes into him with a grunt, sending them both sprawling onto Keith’s air mattress.

The air mattress wheezes it’s complaint and Keith echoes the noise, for he too is not made for the sudden press of the man’s bulk against his back. His dagger is knocked further away by their fall, possibly still within reach if Keith can stretch his arm far enough. He doesn’t hesitate to try.

He closes less than half the distance before the man’s weight disappears, and Keith’s wrist is grabbed in a bruising grip, nails digging into his flesh as he’s forced to turn around and face the man.

Keith struggles against it at first then, once he realizes the man is going to over power him easily, Keith goes with it, rearing up to knock his forehead into the man’s, the force of the impact shooting pain all the way down his spine.

Keith falls limp on his back as the man shakes his head, black strands falling down to tickle Keith’s cheeks. He still has Keith’s wrist captured between his fingers, not that Keith could move very well anyway with the way the room is spinning around him.

The man recovers faster than Keith, and Keith watches that purple flash in his eyes again right before he _roars_ , loud and angry right in Keith’s face.

It’s a terrible sound that shakes Keith’s to his core, vibrating in his chest and bones. The muscles in Keith’s neck ache with the inexplicable urge to tilt his head back, to bare his throat to the snarling man with too sharp teeth above him.

Dazed and frightened and angry, Keith ignores the urge to cower and instead screams out a roar of his own. It’s not nearly as great as the one that came before it. Keith’s voice doesn’t quite reach as deep of a pitch as the man’s did, and his voice cracks somewhere in the middle, but it does the trick.

The man rears back on his knees and loosens his grip on Keith’s wrist in his surprise.

Keith pulls himself free, doing a half turn and lunging for his dagger. His fingers curl around the cool blade and Keith loses his fear as he whirls back, holding the dagger up to make his intent clear.

The weight is gone before Keith has a chance to face the man again and Keith sits up as the man stumbles backward from him, wide eyes flickering between the dagger and Keith’s face while his lips tilt in a frown.

He’s _pouting_ , Keith thinks in disbelief. He stands slow, ready to swipe and stab at any threatening movements from the man, but the man doesn’t seem to want to come anywhere near him now that Keith is armed. He even takes a step back once Keith is at full height.

“Get out,” Keith growls, glaring at sad eyes. “ _Out_ ,” he says again when the man doesn’t move, and bares his teeth for good measure.

The man opens his mouth like he’s about to speak and Keith waits, tense to hear what he has to say, only to feel strangely disappointed when nothing comes out.

He closes his mouth and turns from Keith to become a blur, running almost silently back toward the cabin’s back door.

Keith follows just enough that he can see down the hallway and watches as the man  disappears back into the woods where Keith is sure he came from.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all <3 sorry for the super long wait with part two. I did a big move and then struggled to find my writing inspiration after getting settled, but I think I have it now and am at a place where I can try to update this biweekly. Thanks so much for the support you've already given me with this & I hope you enjoy!
> 
> ***I made a playlist for this fic which I linked in the notes for chapter one if anyone is interested in checking that out!

Keith knows a rookie cop when he sees one. 

In his previous job as a fireman, there were times Keith had to work closely with the police department. During those times he learned that cops would generally fall into a few categories; bad cops, experienced and arrogant cops, good cops, and stupid cops. In Keith’s experience, rookie cops usually fall somewhere in between the later two. 

This Lance they sent to him is a rookie; impatient despite the fact that he’s kept Keith waiting for almost an hour, knocking rapid and loud against Keith’s door upon arrival and stepping past Keith into his cabin without an invite. 

“You said there was a break in?” he says as a greeting. He’s tall and lean, with messy brown hair and blue eyes that are narrowed in suspicion as they dart around Keith’s cabin.   
“Yes.” Keith crosses his arms and leans against the wall to watch Lance work. He’s breathing a bit heavily as he walks through Keith’s cabin and back into the hallway. “He came in through the back porch, I think.”

Lance doesn’t reply, stopping by the back door and running his hand over the door knob. Keith stays where he is as he unlocks the door and steps outside, still unnerved by the idea of going anywhere around the back of the cabin, where the stranger lurked for who knows how long. 

Keith has sat in tense silence since the encounter, keeping his dagger close at hand and jumping at every sound that comes from the wilderness that surrounds him, imaging the feral man coming back for him. Part of the reason he even called the cops was because he couldn’t stand the thought of waiting alone for daylight to come.

He’s starting to regret that decision now. 

Lance comes back inside after spending a couple minutes standing on his back porch, staring off into the woods as if the feral man will come out to greet him eventually. Keith rolls his eyes and spends the time until Lance comes back inside and locks the door behind him holding his breath. 

“It doesn’t look like he forced his way in,” he says once he’s back in the living room with Keith. His eyes stray over to Keith’s air mattress, now half-deflated with the covers strewn about messily from the fight that took place on it, and then come back to give Keith a once over. His gaze lingers around Keith’s waist, where Keith’s dagger is hidden under his clothes, before flicking up to make eye contact with Keith for the first time since he arrived. “You didn’t think to lock up before you went to sleep?”

Keith scowls at his patronizing tone. “It was late when I got in town and I should have been the only one here today. I didn’t think to check all the doors windows before bed.”

Lance cocks his head. “What’s your name?”

“Keith. Why?”

Keith’s question is ignored. “Where were you coming from, Keith?” he demands.  

“A city southeast of here,” Keith says, intentionally vague. He doubts the cop will know of his small hometown in Arizona anyway. 

“And what brought you here?”

“Vacation.”

“Why-”

“Look,” Keith interrupts, “I didn’t call you here to find out my backstory. A crazy man broke into my home and attacked me-”

“You never said he attacked you,” Lance says, voice going high.  He rushes toward Keith. “Did he bite you? Were you scratched?”

Keith, who had been shocked still at Lance’s sudden urgency, snaps out of it when he starts to pat him down. He presses both palms into Lance’s chest and shoves. 

“He didn’t hurt me,” he cries as Lance stumbles back. “He just tackled me and growled a lot.” He straightens his clothes, wiping at them to brush away any remains from Lance’s touch. “And why would you assume he bit or scratched me?” 

“No reason.” Lance regains his footing and straightens faster than Keith would have liked. He’d put a lot of strength into that push, half hoping Lance would fall. “It’s good that you weren’t hurt. I’ll make sure to spread the word around the station and to the locals. Hopefully we’ll find him before the day is over.” 

Keith tenses when Lance moves forward again, but he avoids Keith entirely in favor of Keith’s front door. 

“Wait,” Keith says, following Lance as he opens the door and steps out onto Keith’s porch. “You’re leaving?”

Lance doesn’t turn around. “Yeah? It’s a busy night, I can’t stick around and hang out with every call I get.”

“You haven’t even asked what he looked like!” 

“I know what he looks like.”

“What?”

Lance sends Keith a nasty little smirk over shoulder, eyes glinting strangely in the porchlight. “Welcome to Lion’s Creek, Keith.”

* * *

 

Keith doesn’t get anymore sleep that night. He’s no longer jumping at every noise, but he doesn’t trust his surroundings to fall asleep again. And he can’t stop thinking about what Lance meant by knowing what the man looked like. 

Is Lance friends with the feral man? Or is he someone that’s been known around Lion’s Creek? Instead of the occasional stray cat roaming around, does Lion’s Creek have a wild man who likes to break into people’s cabins and tackle them to the ground before running off into the night every once in a while that the residents have just gotten used to over time and will now expect Keith to do the same? 

By the time the sun comes up Keith is on his third cup of coffee and is debating with himself for the fourth time whether he’d be better off climbing in his truck and making the drive back to Arizona. 

Each time he comes to the conclusion that he can handle the feral man better than he can handle everything he left behind in Arizona. 

Probably.

* * *

 

“You look like shit,” is the first thing James says to him when they meet at the center of town. “Rough night?”

“Something like that,” Keith says, looking around the little plaza that surrounds them. 

Lion’s Creek is a town in northern Oregon that’s made up of miles of mostly wilderness, with a little less than a thousand residents spread out in cabin and homes, each with long winding drives that meet up on the main road that weaves a drivable path through the trees. 

At the center of it all is Altea Plaza, an area with small connecting buildings on either side of the road. Most of them are various types of shops, with a gas station at one end and a diner at the other, all independently owned by the town’s citizens. The post office sits relatively close to the plaza, along with the police station and a small Drs. office. 

To Keith’s knowledge, it’s the only place to do any type of shopping in town, if someone needed something that the plaza didn’t provide, they’d have to make the forty-five minute drive into the city to get it. 

In front of Keith and James is a building with an obnoxiously pink and yellow grand opening sign draped across the large front window. He tries to keep his face neutral at the sight of it but knows he fails when James starts to laugh. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Romelle from across the street wanted to help.”

Keith turns in the direction of James’ nod and catches a blonde blur disappearing through a door with a large neon pink pair of scissors painted on the door. “Why?”

“She wanted to be nice?” James shrugs. “She moved here a couple months ago and hasn’t had the best time settling in with the townsfolk. I think she was hoping to find some sort of camaraderie in you since you’re both outsiders.” 

“Why has she had a hard time settling in?” Keith frowns, thinking of his encounter with the feral man and Lance after. “Is everyone here unfriendly?”

“They’re polite enough,” James says, casting a glance around them that seems almost wary, despite them being the only two around in the early hours of the morning. “But private. Ryan and I have been here for almost a year now and we hardly know anything about anyone here. They get along with each other fine, but as soon as anyone from the outside comes around they close off. It always felt like we were only guests in their town or something.”

“Is that why you’re moving to the city? Because you couldn’t make any friends?”

James laughs. “That, and a shorter drive to work. There’s not much going on out here besides cabins and antisocial people and Altea Plaza.” His eyes are still amused as he looks at Keith. “Though I’m sure you’ll get along fine. You might just be even more antisocial than the people of Lion’s Creek.”

Keith shrugs. “As long as they visit my shop I don’t care about getting to know them, or having them know me.”

“Speaking of,” James pulls a pair of keys out of his pocket. “Are you ready to take a look inside?”

Keith nods, but turns to grab the sign he has in the back of his truck first. It’s a large plank of wood stained mahogany, with the name of Keith’s shop carved in delicate cursive in it. It was made specifically for this moment, for Keith to hang up now that he finally has a shop to call his own, instead of working out of the single room shack that served as Keith’s bedroom, bathroom, and workshop back in Arizona.  

He grows nervous as he turns to face the shop with the sign in his hand. Seeing it finally at the place it’s made for makes his decision to settle down in this strange little town feel more real, and a childish part of him wants to keep it behind his back so James doesn’t see. He’s been woodworking as a hobby since he was young, but it isn’t often that he shows someone else the things he makes.

He supposes he’ll have to get used to that if he wants to make a living out of it. 

Keith shoves the sign out, so James as a clear sight of it. “I’m not accepting criticism,” he blurts.

“Okay,” James says slowly. He expression remains infuriatingly unreadable as he looks over Keith’s sign. “Why Sawdust?”

“I make a lot of sawdust when I work. It’s simple and to the point.” Keith shrugs, dropping his arms so the sign hangs limp by his side. “ _I am not accepting criticism,_ ” he repeats. 

James raises his eyebrows. “I don’t have any to give you anyway,” he says. “You wanna hang it up now before we go in?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, shaking off the self consciousness. “Yeah, let me get my tools.”

* * *

 

There isn’t much inside the shop itself; an area in the back where James and Keith drag Keith’s workbench from his truck and wood and other supplies Keith had delivered in the weeks leading up to his move, a larger space out toward the front with a cash register Keith will use as his front end shop, and a bathroom. 

Once Keith’s truck is unloaded and James has been thanked for all his help with an envelope full of cash, Keith is ready to start setting up his shop for opening day. However, James doesn’t leave right away like Keith expects him to. 

“Keith,” he starts and Keith knows- _knows_ -where he’s going based on the somber tone of his voice. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

“Don’t,” Keith warns.

“If you needed to get away for awhile-that’s fine,” James barrels on. “But if you’re exiling yourself...It wasn’t your fault, Keith.”

“James shut up,” he chokes. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“I think you need to hear it.” James glares at him. “But whatever. Come visit us in the city when you need a break from this creepy town and it’s creepy inhabitants.”  


* * *

 

 

An hour after James leaves, and Keith is well on his way to setting up Sawdust for opening day. He expects most of his sales to happen online, but hopes the townsfolks’ interest in the new shop will bring him in some profit at least. 

He’s still agitated from James’ words earlier. The reminder of what made his decision to come here final makes his muscles wire tight with tension. He can almost see the roaring flames of the house fire, feel the heat lapping at his skin, hear the screams; all of the things that made him freeze when he needed to move. 

The birdhouse he had been about to place on a shelf creaks in his hand and Keith forces himself to take a deep breath and relax, setting it in the right place just as the doorbell chimes behind him.

“We don’t open ‘til Saturday,” he says, noticing the hairs on his bare forearm rise as a cool breeze rushes in with the intruder. 

“I know. I saw the sign out front,” a voice says in a lilting accent. “I was hoping to speak with the owner about something that isn’t quite business related, if he wouldn’t mind.”

Keith minds, but James’ words are still fresh. If he makes a poor impression on one of the people of Lion’s Creek, he’ll make a poor impression on all of them. He doesn’t want his shop failing before it’s had time to take off because of his lack of social skills. 

He turns and finds a woman standing much closer to him than her voice had given away. She’s tall and elegant and beautiful. Her blue eyes are kind and she’s unassuming in her pink sundress with her black hair twisted up in a perfect bun, but there’s an air about her that tells Keith her soft demeanor could turn sharp enough to cut if she needed it to. Keith respects that. 

“I’m the owner,” he says. “What do you need?”

“An introduction to start.” She smiles and holds out her hand. “Allura Crown. I live in the cabin across the pond from you.”

“Oh.” Keith says, wondering where the Shirogane family must have moved to. “I’m Keith.” He shakes her hand once before letting go to cross his arms over his chest.

Allura tilts her head. “Just Keith?”

Keith shrugs. He doesn’t particularly feel like giving her his full name. It’s not like she needs it anyways. 

Allura doesn’t press, but the smile she sends him seems a little too forced to Keith to feel at ease. 

“It was nice to meet you Allura,” he says, and shifts his gaze pointedly toward the door, only to find a man standing on his welcome mat. 

It’s the feral man, and he’s so different in the daylight Keith hardly recognizes him. He’s clean, both the mud and the scruff completely wiped away, his hair has been tamed and combed back into a loose ponytail that hangs over his shoulder. He’s clothed too, though the tight white shirt he wears hides nothing. One thing that didn’t change about him is how broad he is.  His huge form takes up the entire doorway. But it’s his panting, the deep uneven breaths that give him away.

His grey eyes land on Keith and they both stop breathing. 

The feral man takes a step forward and this time Keith is ready for it, drawing his knife as he advances as well. 

The feral man stops and stares at him, expression crushed. Keith bares his teeth at him. 

“Keith,” Allura says from beside him. “This is the other reason I came today. He’s-he won’t hurt you.”

 “He _attacked_ me.”

“He didn’t mean to!”

Keith turns his head slightly so he can glare at her while still keeping the man in sight. “You’re sayin’ he broke into my house and tackled me on accident?”

“Yes,that is exactly what I’m saying.” Allura places her hand on Keith’s, wrapping warm fingers around his wrist. It’s a gentle hold, but Keith knows it’s meant to try to stop him should he lunge. “Shiro isn’t a threat. Please put your weapon away.” 

“Shiro? As is Shirogane?” Keith’s arm goes lax in shock and Allura uses that to press his arm and the dagger down by his side before she takes a step back toward Shiro, getting in between them like Keith is the threat. 

“Yes,” she says after a pause. “He goes by Shiro now, but his first name is actually-”

“Takashi,” Keith breathes, and Shiro whines. 

Allura looks between the two of them with a calculating expression. “You know him?” 

“He taught me how to swim.” The dagger slips from his fingertips onto the floor. 

Shiro takes another stumbling step toward him and another, until he’s standing mere inches from him. 

Keith stops him with a raised hand when it seems like Shiro would be happy to just keep walking until he crashes into Keith. It brushes against the  soft fabric of Shiro’s shirt until Shiro’s hand comes up to mirror Keith’s, pressing their palms together. 

Shiro’s hand is much bigger than Keith’s, and when his fingertips start to curl around the top of Keith’s, almost like he’s showing their size difference off, Keith can’t help but smile up at him. 

Shiro smiles back at him, or at least Keith thinks he tries to. It’s more like he pulls his lips back to show Keith his teeth and squints his eyes. 

“Hello Takashi,” Keith says. “Or I guess it’s Shiro now, isn’t it?”

“Keith,” Shiro rumbles. “Keith, Keith, Keith.”

Beside them Allura sucks in a breath. “That’s the first time he’s spoken since he came back.”

Keith frowns. “What happened to him?”   

Shiro’s smile drops and he growls, a faraway look in his eyes assuring Keith it’s meant for someone in Shiro’s past, not the people around him presently. 

Keith drops his hand but keeps their fingers curled together so Shiro’s hand drops with him. 

“What happened?” he repeats, turning to Allura. 

“We don’t know really.” Allura shakes her head. “He disappeared for about a year. We looked everywhere for him but we could never pick a trail. And then last month he just showed up like this. Scarred and with the white in his hair and the…” She gestures toward Shiro’s right sleeve, where it’s tied off. “He never told us what happened. I thought he couldn’t speak, but now I see that maybe he just wasn’t ready yet.”

Keith watches her watching Shiro. “You’re not telling me the full story.” The words slip out before he can stop them. He doesn’t even know why he says it really. There’s just an odd nauseous feeling in his gut he can’t ignore. 

She doesn’t seem surprised or angry at the accusation. “No,” she admits. “The full story isn’t mine to tell.”

 

Allura leaves Shiro behind while she runs errands around town. Not that Keith minds the company, and Shiro doesn’t seem to mind either. 

He wanders around Keith’s little shop, eyeing Keith’s creations with a bright interest that makes Keith hot under his skin. Though, for all his curiosity, he doesn’t touch anything until he reaches the shelves Keith had been stocking when Allura came in, and even when he does, it’s with slow careful fingers, as if he’s scared of breaking it. 

“That’s a birdhouse,” Keith tells him. “People usually put them on their porches or in trees and birds will- Oh.” He laughs when Shiro turns his awed look from the birdhouse to narrow his eyes at him. 

 _Yes, Keith. I know, Keith,_ his expression clearly reads. 

Again Keith wonders what exactly happened to him. He clearly understands Keith and can even reply in his own way sometimes, but the growling and the tackling are not exactly normal behaviors. 

“Shiro?” Keith asks, and waits as Shiro gently places the birdhouse back on the shelf and walks over to him. “I know now you weren’t trying to hurt me but, why did you break into my house last night?”

Unexpectedly, Shiro’s face flushes and his eyes fly away from Keith’s.

“I’m not mad,” Keith insists. “But I need to know if you’re going to be making a habit of sneaking into unsuspecting peoples’ homes. You might get yourself in trouble one day.”

At this Shiro shakes his head earnestly and lifts a hand to poke a finger at Keith’s chest. 

“Oh, so I’m just special then?” Keith jokes, and falters when Shiro leans down until their foreheads are touching, inhaling deeply. 

Eventually he pulls back and, meeting Keith’s shocked eyes with his serious ones, Shiro nods. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I worried that Shiro and Keith were communicating using only their names and Soft Looks too much in this chapter, but then I remembered they literally do that in the show lol 
> 
> Anyway I hope you all enjoy this! Thanks for reading :)

Opening day goes better than Keith expected it to. By three in the afternoon, his shelves are noticeably vacant and his custom order requests for the month are full. He suspects the good business will die down once the town folks' curiosity has been sated, but until then he’ll enjoy profiting off it. 

He’s also decided that James must have gotten off on the wrong foot with the people of Lion’s Creek somehow, because they’ve been nothing but friendly to Keith. In fact, he’s been introduced to more people than he can possibly remember. 

He has coupons to the grocery around the corner, enough samples from Hunk’s deli to last him at least a week, and Romelle, who has kept him company since the moment he opened, filling what would be rare silences with questions and chatter.

“What’s this?” she asks for maybe the third time in half an hour. 

“A window box for plants.” He’s pretty proud of the swirly design carved into the front of it. Even if it took him four tries to make it look halfway decent.  

“What got you into woodworking?”

“My dad.”

“Oh. I went into hair because I really like fixing hair. It’s like a slumber party all the time, ya know?”

“No.”

“Well it’s- what’s _ this _ ?”

“...a birdhouse?”

“It’s so tiny!”

Keith snorts. “They usually are.”

“A birdhouse would look really nice outside my salon, I think. Do you think you could make one shaped like a hairdryer?”

Keith considers this. “Yeah, probably.” 

“And make it pink-no. Pink and yellow?”

“Whatever you want.”

Romelle’s eyes glaze over at all the possibilities, giving Keith time to focus on the line forming at his counter. 

“Hey, Keith?” Romelle calls once he’s finished taking orders and ringing people out. “I’m not being a bother, am I? I know I talk too much sometimes.”

“The more you talk the less I have to,” Keith replies honestly. “But aren’t you going to lose business if you aren’t around to take customers?” 

“I don’t get much business here anyway. I’m starting to suspect everyone in Lion’s Creek knows how to cut their own hair,” she says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. 

And Keith hasn’t put much heart in any attempts to get her to leave since. 

So, Romelle stays. It’s not like she’s bad company either, Keith decides after she suggests they do trades; haircuts for custom orders from Keith whenever either of them have a need.

“I think you could rock a mohawk,” she suggests while Keith is trying to check out a customer. Keith hears her chuckling when he has to recount the bills in his hand and side eyes her once the change has been safely handed back to the customer. 

“I like my hair the way it is.” 

“It’s practically a mullet.”

Keith points to the door for the sixth time that day and Romelle rolls her eyes at him, knowing better by now than to take him seriously. “You can trim it. Nothing else.”

“Fine.” She pouts for a moment before her expression changes to thoughtful. “I bet you’d look good with a side braid once it grows out some. We’ll just do a trim for your first cut and see.”

“Wouldn’t it be counter productive to cut it when you want it to grow?” Keith asks, and frowns when she begins laughing at him. 

Her laughter cuts off as the doorbell chimes and Keith sees her stiffen before he turns to greet whoever just came in. 

It’s Shiro, barreling through the door and making a beeline for the counter where Keith and Romelle stand. He’s accompanied by two people Keith doesn’t recognize, a man and a woman, who look so alike it’s no question that they’re related. They both have mousy brown hair and eyes, and the exact same nose. The main difference between them is in their height, with the woman being at least a foot shorter than the man. 

“I should go,” Romelle says, already moving around the counter and bypassing Shiro. 

“You don’t have to,” Keith calls after her, bracing himself for impact but still grunting when Shiro bumps into him. For a moment as they hug, Shiro takes up his whole line of sight and by the time he pulls away Romelle is already out the door and crossing the street to her salon.

“Wow he’s awful friendly with you,” the woman says, cocking her head at Keith and eyeing him curiously.

“Is he not like this with everyone?” Keith asks, feeling his face heat up when Shiro leans down to nuzzle into his hair. “Allura said it was normal?”

The woman squacks out a laugh and opens her mouth to say something before the man covers her mouth with his palm. 

“It’s normal,” the man says much too quickly. “My sister here is just a troll.” 

Keith doesn’t believe him but he’s too distracted by the large, muscular, affectionate man pining for his attention to really do much about it. He gently pushes Shiro back so they can make eye contact. “Hello, Shiro.”

“Keith,” Shiro rumbles back at him, voice apparently still hoarse from disuse. 

“My sister’s name is Pidge and I’m Matt,” the man says loudly over the weird choking noise the woman beside him is making. “Though, we technically already met once before.”

Keith turns away from Shiro’s smile to frown at Matt in time to watch him jerk and swipe his hand away from Pidge’s mouth in a hurry. “We have?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Matt says, glaring at Pidge’s smug expression. He turns back to Keith with a little smile. “I was out on the porch in the cabin across the pond from yours when you were moving in. I waved.”

“Oh right,” Keith says, remembering the man in the orange hoodie that caught him staring. “Well it’s nice to meet you in person.”

“Same here,” Matt says. “We’ve heard so much about you already.”

“From who?”

“It’s a small town.” Pidge shrugs. “Word gets around.”

“And Shiro here has a way of expressing things without actually saying anything,” Matt adds, with a fond look at Shiro.

“What do you-” Keith starts to ask, when he’s interrupted by a soft, but insistent pressure on his jaw, urging him to turn back to facing Shiro. “ _ Shiro, _ ” he admonishes, without any heart in it.

“Keith,” Shiro replies happily.

Matt makes a cooing noise and Keith sees Pidge start shuffling around in her pockets.

“I have to get a video of this and send it to Hunk,” she says, giggling.

And maybe it’s the fact that Shiro’s expression is so sweet and trusting as he looks down at him, or maybe Keith’s patience has been worn and frayed from the stress of opening day and socializing with strangers for hours on end, but Keith finds any patience he had left snapping when he sees Pidge pull out her phone and aim it toward them.

Without thinking, he steps in front of Shiro to block as much of her view of him as he can. “Don’t make fun of him,” he snaps and glares into Pidge’s camera.

Behind him Shiro growls, likely reacting to Keith’s anger, and Matt and Pidge both take a step back. Keith reaches behind him to place a hand on Shiro’s stomach in an attempt to comfort him. He shivers when he feels Shiro’s breath tickle his neck during another growl.

“Dude, Shiro’s my best friend, we wouldn’t do that,” Matt says, eyes wide and earnest. “Of course we wouldn’t.”

Pidge, thankfully, puts her phone away then. “It’s not that we’re making fun of him. It’s just so different to see him like this.” She seems to hesitate before she continues. “After the accident, he was stuck in the same state for a long time. He wouldn’t speak and we could tell he wasn’t happy. We didn’t think he’d get any better until you came around.”

Keith relaxes from his angry stance and knows without looking behind him that Shiro does too. “It was all Shiro. I didn’t do anything.” Besides yell at him and wave a knife in his face and call him by his first name, but Keith doesn’t feel too pressed to share those details with the two of them.

“Well whatever it was,” Matt begins. “We’re happy that we got to meet you and see some of our old Shiro again.”

* * *

Keith pulls into the long narrow drive late in the evening of a successful day. His store did well today, and will hopefully continue to thrive long enough for Keith to spend any extra cash on the repairs for the cabin. 

So far, he’s only had time to unpack and scrub some of the dust and grime off surfaces he uses often, but even that feels like a huge step in settling in. He’s stopped sleeping on the air mattress in the living room now that his actual mattress is in place in the loft, right under the sun roof. 

There’s still much to be done before Keith feels comfortable calling the cabin home. The second step from the top on the porch remains broken, the pipes like to send Keith into a panic nearly every time he runs water, and he refuses to use little fireplace in the living room for a source of heat. With winter around the corner Keith will have to figure out another way to stay warm besides piling blankets on top on himself all the time. 

There’s much to be done, but Keith spends the remainder of his evening curled up on the couch, filling his stomach with Hunk’s samples with his laptop in his lap, researching. 

At first he starts simple, with just a name.

_ Takashi Shirogane. _

The top results are two of his social media pages, Twitter and Instagram.  A quick glance shows that neither of them have been updated in over a year. His last twitter update is about staying positive through rough times, with messages of support and love scattered throughout the comments. 

His last instagram post is a short clip of him doing push ups in a  white tank top and yoga pants, both too tight to be legal. It showcases how rough the last year had been on him. He’s clean shaven, hair all black, with a lack of scars and both of his arms. 

_ What happened to you, _ Keith wonders, again and again and again.

He’s tempted to continue scrolling through Shiro’s Instagram, part out of curiosity for the life Shiro lived before his disappearance, and partly out of an urge to watch as many as his workout videos as he can, but that’s not the reason he started his search.

The only other results under Shiro’s name are links to his grandparents obituary from eight years ago- Keith feels a wave of sadness reading that, he knows how close Shiro was to them, knows what it’s like to lose a loved one-, and a few pages of academic awards from Lion’s Creek Daily, the local newspaper, dated back to when Shiro was in school. 

He finds nothing on Shiro’s disappearance. 

He searches through the articles Lion’s Creek Daily site, from two years ago to present day.

He searches missing persons in Lion’s Creek. 

Missing persons in Oregon. 

Missing persons in the United States. 

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

It’s almost like no one reported him missing, Keith thinks and then he realizes.

They never reported Shiro missing. 

* * *

Keith lies in his bed that night, staring up at the stars through the skylight with thoughts of Shiro racing around in his mind. It feels like he’s only centimeters deep in the tunnel of mystery about Shiro and his disappearance that is miles long. There’s so much more that he needs to uncover, Keith can feel it down in his bones. But more than that, Keith just wants Shiro to recover from whatever happened to him.

The wild boy with a loud laugh and knack for adventure Keith knew from his childhood and the quiet, sweet man are so different from one another, yet inexplicably the same. And, for reasons Keith cannot begin to understand, they both decided that Keith was worthy of their time. 

He wants to help Shiro if he can, Keith decides, as the weight of his eyelids grow until he can’t draw them open any longer. He  _ will _ help Shiro in whatever way he can. However he can.  
  


* * *

Keith hears the screams first, desperate and scared. They’re too distant, too far away from him when he needs to be near. Something groans, low and long, and then the ground beneath Keith’s feet shakes. 

His eyes fly open to find himself in the middle of a burning building. The thick black of the smoke and the bright orange flames clash and work together to make it nearly impossible to see. 

Another groan is all the warning Keith gets before the floor where he’s standing starts to collapse in on itself and Keith only just manages to jump toward the staircase, out of the way. A bookshelf falls in Keith’s place, books and burnt plants and pictures of a happy family disappearing into the destruction. 

This was someone’s home, Keith thinks wildly, sadly. 

He can’t breathe and he knows it’s not the smoke getting to him because of his mask, and he can’t tell if the world is really shaking around him or if he’s imagining it. 

He’s scared. 

“The building is too unstable,” his chief calls out from somewhere near the entrance. “We need to leave! Keith!”

Someone screams again, closer this time. It comes from up the stairs behind Keith.

“KEITH,” his chief yells again. “Godammit kid!”

Keith turns and sprints up the stairs. 

“I’m here!” Keith yells to the stranger. “Where are you?”

There’s no scream to answer him this time so Keith takes a chance and tries to open the closest door without thinking. He immediately has to flinch back, covering his face with his arms as hungry flames rush out toward him. It’s heat should burn him, but thankfully shock and adrenaline keep the pain at bay.

“Where are you?” Keith yells again, and hears a low call in response. 

It’s almost a whisper, and it sounds strangely like his name. Keith tries to squint through the flames, into the room behind them. Both the heat and the flames make his eyes water, blurring his vision.

He hears the voice again, definitely saying his name, so close it has to be right in front of him. It doesn’t stop this time, chanting his name over and over as the fire in front of him grows into a tower of light and heat.  Entranced, Keith reaches his hand out toward the flames.

‘ _ Yes _ ’, the fire sings, ‘ _ Keith Keith Keith, _ ’

 He manages to stop his hand only inches away from the flames, but the fire is too eager to greet him. It laps at him, first his fingers, then his hand and his are consumed by the rush of heat and light, all the while it roars his name.

He wakes up screaming and trying to claw at his own skin. Trying because something heavy is pinning him down, keeping him from moving much at all. It’s a figure cast in shadow from the darkness of night and the ominous orange glow of flames Keith swears he can still see at the edges of his vision.

Still half delicious from sleep and the need to run from the flames in his nightmares, Keith struggles until the can get his hands on the figure, pushing his palms under their chest, shoving and then freezing when he hears a hiss and a yelp of pain. 

The sound jars him. He realizes that he’s not in the burning house, but in his cabin in Lion’s Creek. There isn’t any fire threatening to burn him down, though Keith has to blink a few times to clear away wisps of smoke he knows isn’t really there and it takes a few breaths before the scent of something burning goes away. 

The figure above him turns out to be Shiro, still hovering on his knees with his thighs on either side of Keith’s waist, but now hunched over with his arm curled up against chest, looking at him with a strange wide-eyed expression that Keith can’t place. 

“Shiro?” Keith says, shivering and sweating at the same time. He can feel a drop of sweat drip from his temple down his cheek, then underneath his jaw and down his neck. Shiro’s eyes track it and shift away twice over as Keith watches. “Shiro?” 

Shiro’s eyes meet Keith’s and stay there. His body doesn’t move an inch, locked in that awkward half-curled hunch, and Keith can’t help reaching for him then, wanting both to comfort and be comforted.  

Keith never reaches him though, because as soon as Shiro realizes what he’s doing, Keith is suddenly flat on his back, his arms and lap full of Shiro. 

“I’m sorry I pushed you. I didn’t know it was you,” Keith says, and thoughtlessly tilts his head back to give Shiro access to his neck. 

He’s too tired wonder why exactly he does this, but Shiro seems to like it. He burrows closer, pressing his face into the nape of Keith’s neck and breathing deeply. He shudders with each exhale and Keith feels electric sparks travel through his veins, raising goosebumps along his flesh in its wake. 

“We did talk about you not breaking into my home in the middle of the night anymore,” Keith adds, more to fill the silence than anything. “So, you can’t really blame me for  _ hi- _ ”

His words cut off with a squeak when he feels Shiro’s tongue, hot and wet, licking a path of the side of his neck where the sweat has gathered. Teeth follow it, scraping gently across his neck, right below his ear and biting down with the slightest of pressure.

“Shiro,” Keith pants, half confused and half something he doesn’t want to put a name to. Something that makes him want arch into it and let the needy little sounds stuck in the back of his throat out. 

Shiro growls, a frustrated sound before he abruptly moves up off Keith and for a split second Keith thinks he sees Shiro’s eyes glowing violet. His eyes squeeze shut and he shakes his head as if to clear it. When they open, they’re back to his normal steel grey.

The loss of Shiro’s warmth reminds Keith of the chill in his room and he sits up too, stuck between wanting to reach for the covers or wanting to reach for Shiro again. He’s moved away from Keith so fast he’s already by the staircase that leads down from the loft. 

“Wait,” Keith calls. “I wasn’t really mad about you breaking in here. I’m actually relieved. That was one hell of a nightmare I had.” He gives what he hopes is a reassuring smile, it’s quick to leave when Shiro remains frozen too far away from him. “You can stay.”

Shiro’s mouth turns down in a pout and his brows furrow as he looks between Keith and the door, conflicted. He takes another step back, further away, and Keith cracks a little on the inside.

“I don’t want to be alone right now,” Keith confesses, curling his knees up to his chest in an attempt to hold himself together. “Please don’t go,” he adds selfishly, desperately.  

That brings Shiro back to him faster than a lightning strike. One moment he’s by the steps and the next he’s on Keith’s mattress with him. He doesn’t climb on top of Keith this time though, instead sitting beside him. 

“Thank you,” Keith says, slowly uncurling so his legs are spread out. He shivers a little and Shiro reaches for the covers, dragging it across both their laps. He can feel Shiro’s eyes on him as he lies back and on his side, pillowing his head in his arm. 

Shiro mirrors his position to face him. His inquisitive gaze remains on Keith’s face as they both get comfortable.

Keith sighs. “You wanna know what the dream was about?”

Shiro nods, expression soft and imploring, but Keith knows he wouldn’t push it if Keith was uncomfortable talking about it. 

It’s funny, Keith thinks, how Shiro hardly uses any words but Keith can understand him better than any other person he’s ever dealt with before. As Keith mulls it over in his head, he decides that talking about it might make him feel better, and that maybe Shiro understands Keith better than most people too.

“My dad was a firefighter. Do you remember him?” At Shiro’s nod he continues. “Well, I’m sure you heard, but he uh...he died on the job. He went back into a building that was unstable to save someone who had gotten trapped. They made it out and he didn’t.” Keith sniffs and feels Shiro’s hand find his own. “And when I turned eighteen I thought it’d be a good idea to follow in his footsteps, become a firefighter and help people, like my dad did.”

“It was fine at first. The training was challenging enough to keep me interested and the crew I worked with sort of felt like a little family there for awhile. It was a small town, so most of the jobs we went on didn’t involve anything crazy. But inevitably, there was a house fire.” He hesitates, chewing on his bottom lip, and Shiro’s grip on his hand tightens. “It was bad; by the time we got there, you could barely see the house itself underneath the flames and smoke. Most of the family made it out, but the parents said they couldn’t find their youngest daughter, she was only three. It was the first time I’d ever seen anything like it before, and I knew I was scared-of course I was- but I was excited too. Saving that little girl was the whole reason I became a firefighter in the first place.”

“But when I was actually in that house, surrounded by all the fire and destruction, it wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. It was so hot, and it was hard to see or hear or breathe. I froze in the middle of their burning living room, frightened and useless.” Keith sighs. “I heard something then, calling my name. I thought it was the little girl, but they told me later that she’d been found and rescued from the first floor. I didn’t know that then, so I followed the sound all the way up onto the second floor, where the flames were the worst. There wasn’t anything up there but more fire and smoke, but I kept hearing something calling my name and I couldn’t turn away from it.” 

Keith stares at their intertwined hands as he finishes, unable to look Shiro in the eye. “My captain found me up there, holding my hand out like I was about to put it through a wall of flames in front of the master bedroom door. The stairway had collapsed on his way up so he grabbed me and tossed us both out of the second floor window. I dislocated my shoulder and bruised some ribs, but my captain lost his eye from the glass and shattered his leg from the fall.”

“That was it from the dream, but afterward, I never told anyone about the voices, so my crew believed I was suicidal and had been planning this since I joined, because of the way my father passed. They blamed me when my captain was forced to retire early, so I quit and moved into what was left of my dad’s old home until I could figure out where to go. And here I am.” 

Keith takes a breath and lets it out slowly, exhausted after speaking so much. There is a strange, lighter feeling in his chest. Shiro is the first person he’s told about the voices, and it feels good to finally let it out in the open. Hopefully Shiro doesn’t think differently of him for it. 

A finger under his chin urges him to tilt his head up to face Shiro. Shiro, who despite hearing Keith’s tale of cowardice and voices in the flames, is watching Keith with something soft and sweet in his eyes.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Keith asks. 

Shiro shakes his head immediately. He opens his mouth to speak and wilts when no sounds come out. His hand drops from Keith’s chin to grab Keith’s hand, pressing it up against the tattered shirt that only covers most of his chest. Once Keith’s hand is there, he puts pressure on his hand before letting go, like he’s trying to make a point. 

“What is it?” Keith asks, unable to help scraping his fingers gently across the rough edges of the hole in Shiro’s shirt located directly over his heart. It’s quite large, about the same size of Keith’s palm. He wonders what caused it. “I already know you need to take better care of your clothes. I bet half your wardrobe has holes in it from all the time you spend running in the woods.” 

Shiro sighs dramatically and plops down on his back, throwing an arm out to pull Keith down with him, apparently through with trying to make Keith get his point 

Keith settles into Shiro’s chest, unbothered. Shiro has seen Keith at his worst tonight and decided to stay. They have time to figure out all the rest. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of this chapter and edited it today, which is never a good idea xD I apologize in advance if I left behind any crazy typos, I'll probably come back and edit again once my eyes are less tired.

Shiro loves painting.

Shiro loves painting and is, apparently, very bad at it. Keith bites his lip to hide his smile as he watches him paint a thick purple line down the roof of a birdhouse and then past it-to the side wall that had originally been painted red- and past  _ that _ , onto the plastic covering the work table. At least Keith won’t have to worry about the customer complaining that they missed any spots. Keith just hopes they like purple. 

Shiro has taken to helping him around the shop in the mornings whenever he can, and keeping him company whenever he can’t. He usually stays until lunch time, and then leaves when either Allura or Matt stop by to pick him up. Some days Shiro is reluctant to leave Keith’s side, and sometimes he’s eager for whatever it is he has planned with his two other friends.

They’re always vague when Keith asks about it. They have ‘errands’ to run more often than not, and don’t ever elaborate on what it is they do every evening. Keith’s distrust for them grows and grows until he can hardly stand to keep a scowl off his face when they come into his shop. 

He has no doubt they know more about what happened to Shiro than they let on, and the idea that they might have had something to do with it keeps him awake at night, fantasizing about shoving Shiro behind him and holding his dagger to their throat the next time they come for him and demanding to know what happened.

Romelle obviously isn’t too fond of any of them either, but she avoids the subject entirely, only coming into Keith’s shop whenever Shiro and his friends are long gone and talking about everything under the sun but them. He doesn’t know how to approach her about the subject either. He’s never been very good with words, but it makes part of him feel vindicated that he’s not the only one in town that seems wary of them.

And then there’s Shiro. Shiro who obviously adores and trusts his two friends. Keith hates thinking bad about them behind his back, hates the idea that they could take his trust and twist it in order to do something to hurt him. If Keith’s gut suspicion is right in the first place. He could be very wrong.

  
He hopes he is. Because he doesn’t know how to go about it if he somehow finds out he’s right. It’d be the whole town against Keith, and Keith isn’t sure who Shiro would side with once he starts throwing around accusations about his friends. 

Something cold and wet sliding up his neck stops his train of thought in its tracks. He blinks up at Shiro standing in front of him with a too innocent expression on his face. For a moment he thinks Shiro used his tongue on him again, but when he touches the wet spot and looks at his hand, he finds his fingertips purple. 

“Did you...”

Shiro grins at him, eyes flashing. Before Keith can react, he lifts his paintbrush and swipes a line up the other side of Keith’s neck, mirroring the first.

Keith stumbles back from him, laughing incredulously. He sits the birdhouse he was working on down, safely out of the way and dips his paintbrush with a fresh swab of bright pink paint. By the time he’s armed, Shiro has reloaded his own brush.

They circle each other around the small open space of Keith’s workshop, movements slow, paint dripping on the floor. 

“Just remember,” Keith begins, smirking, “you asked for this.”

Shiro’s returning smirk is all the warning he gets before Shiro lunges at him. Keith dances out of the way, dodging Shiro in time to send him crashing into the wall behind him. There’s no covering on that wall but Keith can’t find it in himself to care. 

He darts forward and turns, swiping a bright pink line across Shiro’s forehead and jumping back again to avoid the jab of Shiro’s paintbrush. Shiro stumbles from the missed hit but Keith is too far away from him to take advantage of it. Shiro recovers and swipes the back of his hand across the paint on his forehead, getting some off but mostly smearing it. He tilts his head to the side curiously as he holds his messy hand in front of his face.

Then he comes for Keith again.

He moves with such speed and grace that Keith feels clumsy, stumbling over his own feet to keep away from Shiro and his purple paint. He chases Keith around the room, managing to strike him on both his arm and in his hair, while Keith smears one shakey line across his chest on a blind backward strike before the inevitable happens. 

Keith trips and Shiro follows him down. Keith is struck by an odd sense of deja vu then, on the floor on his stomach with Shiro hovering behind and over him, knees on either side of his hips and paint splattered hand on the ground by his head, but the hand raises out of his line of sight before Keith has time to dwell on it, and Keith doesn’t want to wait around and see what Shiro has planned for him. 

He twists and rolls, getting his legs around Shiro’s waist and using that momentum to reverse their positions. Only this time they’re facing each other, and Keith has an up close view of Shiro’s happy and surprised smile. Heat swirls in the pit of Keith’s stomach.

“Do you yield?” Keith pants, holding his paintbrush inches away from Shiro’s nose. 

Shiro stares up at him, something soft and warm and open about him, before he tilts his head back, baring his neck to Keith. The sight of Shiro beneath him, submitting in his own unique way to Keith, sends electricity slicing through his veins. 

He can see Shiro’s pulse beating slow and steady even after chasing Keith around the room. It calls to him, has him throwing his paintbrush off to the side uncaringly so he can bury his face into the nape of Shiro’s neck. 

Keith breathes in, takes in Shiro’s unique scent, and sighs when the air between them shifts into something settled and peaceful. When he pulls back Shiro’s pupils are blown behind half lidded eyes and Keith knows he feels it too.

“Keith,” Shiro says, and licks his lips. 

“Hi Shiro,” Keith says. Their faces are so close like this, he could just-

“ _What the fuck_ -”

They both jerk and look over to the doorway where they find Lance, face twisted in rage.All at once the warm comfort he had been feeling with Shiro fades into something sharp and cold;something that sets him on edge and makes him want to move, to take Shiro with him, far far away. He doesn't run, but stands instead trying to settle himself as he straightens.

He doesn't know what it is about Lance that's setting him off so bad. Sure, he looks angry for reasons unknown to Keith, but he's only a couple inches taller than Keith and probably weighs even less than him. Keith knows he could take him in a fight, but still his mind screams:  _ threat threat threat _ .

"We're closed," he says, though he's pretty sure Lance didn't come here for a custom made birdhouse.

Shiro stands next to him, angling his body slightly in front of Keith's and to the side, as if getting ready to step in between them. Keith doesn't look away from Lance to try to see what expression might be on Shiro's face.

Lance narrows his eyes at Keith. "What are you doing to Shiro?"

"I'm not doing anything to Shiro," Keith says slowly, not understanding. "I- We were painting?"

"Oh really? Because that-" Lance gestures toward the paint spattered ground where Shiro and Keith had been lying moments before. "Didn't look like what I would call painting."

Keith crosses his arms, his face and neck growing hot. "We were only messing around."

Somehow this makes Lance even angrier, his shoulders draw up close to his ears and he marches a couple steps forward, closing the distance between him and Keith. "Well maybe Shiro doesn't appreciate you  _ messing _ with him." He emphasizes the last few words by jamming his finger into Keith's chest hard enough to bruise.

Keith balks, shoving Lance's hand away from him. "He started it!"

Neither of them notice the low growling coming from beside them, getting louder with each passing second.

"I highly doubt that," Lance scoffs. "Shiro never acted like this until you came around."

"Like what," Keith asks. "Happy? Maybe if he had friends who actually cared about him-"

"You don't know anything about us!" Lance cries, his face shifting and changing so fast that Keith almost misses it; one moment he's different, wilder and the next he's back to normal. "We were doing fine on our own and then you came and-and bewitched him!"

"Oh I know you were fine," Keith sneers. "Fine enough that when Shiro went missing you didn't even report it. Did any of you even try to find him while he was gone? Did you look for him once?"

Lance starts to tremble all over. "We looked for him everywhere," he says low, choked.

Keith notices the growling now, loud and right next to his ear but he's too angry, too focused on unleashing all his pent up frustrations and questions from the past couple weeks out on Lance to pay any attention to it. "Who found him then? Was it you?"

"He found his own way back to us. He wanted us because we're his family. Us, not you."

"He found me too," Keith says, quiet but still heated with anger. "I didn't bewitch him, or whatever it is you think I did. I've known him since I was little. He's my family too."

"NO," Lance roars, voice deeper than ever before, and shoves Keith hard enough to knock him off his feet.

Another roar sounds as Keith falls, loud enough that it shakes the entire building. Keith lands on his back, something digging painfully into his lower spine. For a moment he stares dazed up at the ceiling, wheezing and feeling an ache in his chest with each breath. Lance is much stronger than he looks.

He hears another crash and a whine, high pitched over a continuous low growling that now very much has his attention. Keith sits up slowly, pulling out the object digging into his spine as he does so.

It's the birdhouse he was working on before his paint fight with Shiro. It was supposed to be Romelle's, but now it's broken beyond repair.

In front of him, Shiro has Lance down on his back on the ground, in almost a mockery of the position he was in with Keith just before Lance arrived. Shiro's head is tilted down, his long hair acting as a curtain to hide his face, but Keith recognizes his roar from the first night they saw each other back in the cabin, and knows he must be angry about something. Lance is staring up at Shiro with a wide-eyed, hurt expression.

As Keith watches, Shiro growls again, lower this time. It sounds like a warning.

"Al-" Lance begins, but it turns into another whine when Shiro keeps growling. His eyes flicker down and away from Shiro before he tilts his head to the side just like Shiro did to Keith earlier. Just like Keith did to Shiro the other night when he had a nightmare.

Oh, Keith thinks as he heart thuds painfully in his chest.  _ Oh _ .

He feels stupid for thinking that had been something that Shiro only did with him when apparently it has been how he's communicated with everyone all along. He can only fight to keep his emotions in check as Shiro runs his hand down the side of Lance's face and neck, resting his palm gently at the nape of Lance's neck until Lance sighs and relaxes beneath him.

Keith's only thankful that he doesn't have to watch Shiro bury his face in Lance's neck because he doesn't know if he'd be able to handle it if he did. Small mercies. 

Now Keith is the intruder, clearing his throat and making Shiro and Lance jerk. Shiro stands first, pulling a much more subdued Lance to his feet after. 

As soon as Lance is upright Shiro shoves at Lance's shoulder, pushing him toward Keith and hinting at something with a jerk of his chin.

Lance rolls his eyes to the ceiling, grumbling something in Spanish that Keith doesn't understand before he faces Keith again. "I'm sorry about pushing you and breaking the birdhouse." When Keith doesn't immediately say anything he looks back toward Shiro for help then adds, "I could fix it for you?"

Keith is normally the type to let things go. He's been a loner most of his life, preferring his own company and the company of the few others he lets in to anyone else. Any time he's had a problem with someone, he'd much rather they both go their own way and never speak again than hold a grudge against them.

But there's something about the way Shiro is looking at him over Lance's shoulder that tells him he's expecting more than Keith's acceptance; something about the way Lance is still twitching like he wants to continue pushing Keith; something about the stinging in his chest, where he knows bruises in the shape of Lance's hands are forming that fills Keith with the want to not back down from this one.

Keith doesn't want to fight and he doesn't want to forgive, so he does neither.

He stands straight, fixing Lance with a bland unimpressed look. "Don't do it again," he commands.

Lance gapes at him and, much to Keith's satisfaction and surprise, avoids his gaze from there on out, keeping his eyes everywhere else but Shiro and Keith. Shiro is beaming at Keith from behind Lance, bright and happy, and even though Keith chose not to fight with Lance, he still feels as if somehow he's won.

It doesn't do much to lessen the bitterness in his gut that's still there from seeing Lance and Shiro's obvious intimacy with each other. He thinks understands a little better why Lance was so angry at seeing Keith on top of Shiro when he first came in.

Keith swallows, leaning down to pick up the pieces of Romelle's broken birdhouse in order to avoid seeing the pride behind Shiro's eyes any longer. "I think you should leave," he says.

"Right," he hears Lance say. "Well, I actually came here to pick Shiro up, so..." he trails off and Keith falters, looking back up when he realizes that Lance is asking for his permission to take Shiro with him.

"I figured you weren't stopping in for a friendly chat," Keith huffs, seeing Lance grimace. "You can go. I'll clean this up myself."

He bends to gather all the loose splinters of wood on the floor in an attempt to avoid looking at Shiro entirely. He can hear Lance leave after a moment, but when Shiro's footsteps follow, they move closer to Keith instead of further away. Eventually Shiro's bare feet enter Keith's line of sight. They're speckled with purple and pink paint.

"Keith," Shiro says softly.

Keith sighs and stands, biting his lip when he sees Shiro's confused expression. Shiro must be able to tell Keith's still upset and doesn't understand why. And Keith-well.

Keith is more upset with himself than Shiro. He'd thought from the way Shiro's friends acted about them that maybe what they had was unique to just the two of them, but he can see now that Shiro is as affectionate toward Keith as he is with all his other friends. And there's nothing wrong with that. It was Keith who misunderstood, he shouldn't blame Shiro.

"Thank you for helping me paint the birdhouses. It was fun," he says, forcing himself to smile up at Shiro until Shiro's frown disappears.

Shiro gives him a hug goodbye. Keith is the first to pull away.

* * *

 

Romelle comes to visit his shop later on in the afternoon, humming a pop song Keith vaguely recognizes, long blonde pigtails bouncing and waving behind her with each step.

He hastily covers the new version of her birdhouse he's halfway through making with a spare cloth as soon as he recognizes her voice.

"Did I flip the sign from closed to open when I came in on accident?" he wonders out loud.

"If you really wanted to keep me out you would have locked the door behind you," Romelle says cheerily as she comes to stand beside Keith at his workbench. Her eyes immediately zone in on the cloth with the suspicious lumps underneath it. "Is this my birdhouse?"

"Maybe," Keith says, sliding it a safe distance away from her. "You aren't allowed to see it until it's done."

Romelle pouts. "Why?"

"Because I said so."

"Ugh fine," Romelle groans dramatically. “Will you at least tell me how you managed to get paint all over yourself?”

Keith chuckles. “Shiro was helping me. I guess he grew bored painting his birdhouse and wanted to paint me instead.”

His laughter dies out when Romelle’s expression shutters off and goes dark. “Romelle?”

She blinks and the dark look is gone. “Yes?”

“Why do you hate Shiro and his friends so much?”

“I don’t hate them.”

“Well are you scared of them? Did they do something to you?”

“No. No it’s not…” Romelle sighs. “Keith, if I tell you something do you promise you won’t tell anyone? Not even Shiro?”

Keith doesn’t hesitate. “I promise.”

“It’s hard to explain, but ever since I was a kid I would get these incredibly vivid dreams at night about myself or the people around me.” She swallows and twirls her hair between her fingers, a habit Keith has noticed she does when she’s nervous. “After awhile, I noticed that more often than not, the things that would happen in my dreams would happen in real life too.”

“What, like a premonition?” Keith says, half-joking but Romelle only nods. 

“They’ve been happening more and more since I moved here,” she whispers. “I dreamed of Shiro the night he came back. I saw him surrounded by the wrong kind of people. I saw him hurting someone who didn’t deserve it.”

Keith takes a step away from her, shaking his head. “That’s not true. Shiro isn’t bad; he’d never hurt anyone. Not on purpose.”

Romelle closes her eyes, crossing her arms around herself like a hug. “You don’t believe me.”

Keith stares at her, helpless. Since Keith was little, he’s been able to read people pretty easily, been able to tell when they’re been honest with him and when they’re not. Keith’s dad used to say he had really good intuition, Keith always believed that most people were just terrible liars. Whatever it is, Keith can tell that Romelle truly believes what she’s telling him. 

“I believe you,” Keith says. “But I believe Shiro is a good person too. Maybe what you saw wasn’t the whole picture, or maybe he’ll make a mistake, I don’t know. Shiro wouldn’t hurt anyone,” he states, ignoring the sudden, vivid memory of Shiro towering over him in his cabin, roaring over him, flashing behind his eyes like a warning. 

Romelle chews on her bottom lip, expression troubled, but doesn’t argue.

A sudden thought occurs to him. “Romelle?”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever...dreamed of me?”

“Yes,” Romelle says, voice carefully blank. “Once.”

“And what did you see in my future?”

Romelle hesitates, taking a breath and letting it out slowly. “I see fire.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the pace has been kinda slow up until this point, but thanks for sticking with it! Things are about to get a lil wild by the end of chapter six. The full moon is just around the corner after all ;)

Keith turns sharply into the driveway of his only neighbor, pressing on the gas hard enough that the tires skid on gravel for a couple seconds before they can grip and begin propelling up a steep hill to the Shirogane cabin. 

He hadn’t planned on coming here during his drive home, but the thought of spending the night alone dwelling on Romelle’s words doesn’t sound very appealing. 

‘I see fire,’ she said. 

Keith shudders, stumbling out of the truck and making his way to the front door. The lights are all off in the cabin, which surprises Keith. Even when he comes home on really late nights, he can count on looking over and seeing the cabin lit up brightly, the forest’s very own nightlight.

It’s eerily quiet too, no sounds come from inside or around the cabin, which is strange. There’s always some type of sound coming from the woods around them, but tonight there is nothing. 

It feels like the forest is waiting on something. 

Keith knocks, and the silence remains, leaving Keith standing unsure of himself on the cabin’s large front porch. He saw several different vehicles lining the driveway when he arrived, so he’s sure someone must be home, and he doesn’t think it’s late enough that they’d already be in bed, but he could be wrong.

_ ‘Or maybe he doesn’t want to see you,’ _ a voice taunts nastily in the back of Keith’s mind.  _ ‘Maybe you’re only a past time while he waits for his friends to be able to hang out with him.’ _

His hand pauses midway through another knock and falls limp to his side, fingers curled into a loose fist. He begins to walk away from the cabin back toward his truck, resigning himself to a sleepless night. He’s halfway there, keys dangling in his hand, when a voice calls out from the cabin. 

“Keith, wait!” It’s Allura, and somehow her voice awakens the rest of the forest. There’s a weight in the air that Keith hadn’t noticed until it vanishes, and suddenly Keith can hear the sounds of various animals in the woods around them. An owl hoots in the distance and crickets sing. Wind rustles his clothes and hair.  

Keith turns back around to find Allura standing on the porch, looking wide awake with perfectly combed hair and white jeans and a baggy blue t-shirt on. Behind her, all the lights in the cabin are turned on and he can see several people standing around a kitchen island on the main floor, staring out at Keith with expressions that range from curious to concerned. He recognizes Matt, Pidge, Hunk, and Lance, but among them stands a tall, lean man with ginger hair and a curly mustache that Keith has never seen before. There’s no sign of Shiro. 

For his sanity, Keith switches his attention away from the audience to Allura. “Doesn’t look like I woke ya’ll up,” he notes. 

“No,” Allura agrees. She doesn’t elaborate. 

There’s a pause where they both stare at each other, Keith doesn’t know what to say and Allura seems to be contemplating something. Then, a low keening sound pierces the night air, coming from somewhere behind the cabin. 

Keith moves toward it without thinking and stops, reconsidering. Allura doesn’t seem startled by the sound. “What was that?” he asks her.

“Keith, you care about Shiro, yes?”

He stares at her. “Yeah, he’s my friend.”

This makes her smile. “And you want to help him get better?”

“Yes.”

“No matter what strange things you might see tonight?”

Keith glances back through the window, noticing that the main floor is now empty as far as he can tell. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things since I’ve moved here.”

“And yet you’re still here,” Allura says in a soft, curious tone. “Why don’t you come inside?”

Keith goes inside.

The interior of the cabin smells like a combination of pinecones and lemon, and is just as beautiful and large as the outside is. There’s windows as tall as walls lining both the side of the cabin that faces the pond and the back of the cabin that faces the woods, and a large sunroof taking up the center of the high ceiling. The wood on the floors are made of real mahogany and the countertops are a deep blue granite. It looks more like a miniature mansion than a cabin. 

It’s open too, so Keith can easily search the entire main floor and up into the second floor loft, where several doors line the walls leading to other rooms in the cabin, for any signs of anyone else inside other than Keith and Allura. He finds nothing. 

Allura comes to stand beside him. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? I remember the first time Shiro invited me over, I was enthralled with this place. It’s strange to think of it as home now.”

“You live here with Shiro?”

“Yes. Coran and I do, you’ll meet him soon. We lost our home a couple years back and Shiro was kind enough to offer us a place to stay. Though, the others are here often enough that it feels like they live with us too.” She chuckles, reaching out to pick up a picture from a shelf above an unlit fireplace. 

She holds it out for him, showing Keith a picture of everyone Keith saw in the cabin kitchen earlier, plus Shiro and Allura, all sitting together on the large sectional couch in the living room. Their attention is on Lance, who appears to be in the middle of a story based on his blurry hands and open mouth. There’s a blush wine in Shiro, Allura, and Coran’s hands, a beer in front of Lance, Hunk, and Matt, and an empty shot glass and a bottle of whisky in front of Pidge, who is holding the phone out in front of her to take the picture. 

“This was taken before Shiro disappeared,” Keith notes. Shiro doesn’t have his white streak or scar in the picture, and it makes him look so much younger.

Allura hums in agreement. “Yes. We took this on the new moon. He disappeared on the full moon after we took this.”

“You remember the moon phases of those nights?” Keith asks. He hardly thinks of the moon unless he’s staring straight up at the night sky. 

“It’s important to keep track of such things,” Allura says. “Tonight for instance, is another new moon. It’s why I think Shiro could use your help tonight.” 

“What does the moon phase have to do with Shiro?”

“Quite a bit actually.” Allura places the picture back in its resting spot and turns to face Keith with a grim expression on her face. “Nights of the new moon used to be nights of celebration for our group. As soon as the sun began to set we’d eat and drink like we were in the picture and then, once it was well into the night, we’d go out into the woods and we’d run together.”

Keith stares at her. “You’re telling me you guys go out running in the middle of the woods, during the darkest night of the month? Every month?”

“We used to. It hasn’t been the same since Shiro came back. I’ve been trying to the best of my knowledge but I haven’t been able to find a way to help them. They can’t...cut loose, like they could before.”

“Cut loose?”  

“Sometimes it’s good for them to get out of their own skin,” Allura says, the bright look in her eyes trying to tell Keith something her lips won’t say. “The new moon allowed them to run off that energy and bond as a group, and prepare for the hunt of the full moon.”

Keith takes a moment to process that. All he can think to say is, “It sounds like you worship the moon.”

“It’s more so that it calls to them and brings them strength. A call they haven’t been able to answer in over a year now. It’s made us weaker both individually and as a group. I suspect that’s what his captors wanted in the first place.”

“How can I help?”

“I don’t know,” Allura sighs out a long breath. “I do know that Shiro has faith in you...and that he’s been calling for you all night.”

Keith’s chest seizes. “Where is he?” he asks urgently but Allura hesitates, placing a hand on his arm as if to hold him off from running around the cabin in search of Shiro. 

“Remember Keith, depending on how this goes you might see more strange things tonight. Things you won’t be able to put logic to, things that might scare you.”

“If Shiro needs my help then I don’t care what strange things surround him.”

Allura considers him. “And if Shiro is the strange thing?”

“Shiro is Shiro,” Keith snaps. “Now tell me where he is.”

Allura leads him out the back door of the cabin, through a sunroom and into a small, grassed clearing that dips down to a hill several yards away from the cabin that leads into the woods. The weight in the air is back, expect this time Keith is in the middle of it and not trapped on the outside. It shimmers in front of his eyes and caresses his skin, no longer waiting but pleading for something Keith isn’t sure he can give.

His next breath shudders out of him and Allura’s hand is back on his arm gentle, guiding him off to the side of the clearing where a large shack rests. 

The door is slightly cracked open and Keith can hear the keening again, loud and despaired and unquestionably Shiro. 

Keith is moving forward before Allura can stop him, pushing the door aside to get to Shiro, desperate to do whatever he can to make him stop _. Shiro needs him _ .

However the sight the greets him pulls him up short, has him hesitating in the doorway. 

The shack is larger on the inside than it looks, which is a good thing because he knows now this is where everyone else went when Allura invited him into the cabin. They all stand to one side, pale and staring at him with an eerie look behind their wide eyes. They’re all shivering and twitching at random too, like they can hardly stand to keep still. 

The man with ginger mustache stands closest to him, and Keith knows he must be the person Allura was talking about before, Coran. “Oh dear,” he says, looking at Keith with that same expression of curiosity and concern. “Princess, are you sure this is a good idea?”

A low growl interrupts whatever Allura’s reply may have been, and it pulls Keith’s attention toward the back corner of the cabin where he finds Shiro, lying on a makeshift bed of blankets and pillows. 

He looks terrible. He’s hunched in on himself, his hair down and hiding his face from view as he shivers and growls. Even at Keith’s distance he can see a thin layer of sweat clinging to Shiro’s skin. 

“Shiro?” Keith whispers, and takes a step toward him. 

Shiro falls silent and jerks his head at the sound of Keith’s voice. His hair parts and reveals a shadow of his face underneath, his eyes open and glow violet. 

Keith sucks in a breath, his heart thudding in his chest. The memory of Allura’s voice whispers in the back of his mind, warning him of strange things. He meant what he said before though, no matter what strangeness surrounds Shiro, he’s still Keith’s friend. He’d never be scared of him. 

He tries to take another step but this time it’s Coran reaching out an arm to block his path. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, young man. Shiro isn’t himself right now.”

Keith spares a moment to glare at him and then pushes roughly past his hand. “Shiro won’t hurt me.”

As he continues forward to Shiro, his growling pitches louder and louder, until it shakes deep into Keith’s bones. He’s within arms reach of him when Shiro’s lips part to show his teeth, canines larger and sharper than they ever have been before. Keith stomach flips in a sudden swooping sensation that isn’t quite fear but something darker, hotter. He files the feeling deep down and locks it away, knowing that there are more pressing matters at hand. 

He crouches down so he’s on an equal level as Shiro, holding Shiro’s gaze the whole time and knowing that it’s both Shiro and something else, something wilder, looking back at him through Shiro’s violet eyes. 

Once they’re eye to eye, Keith reaches out to tuck some of Shiro’s hair behind his ear so his face is more visible. He freezes when Shiro turns into it, nostrils flaring as he nuzzles then nips at Keith’s wrist.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Keith finds himself saying. “I’m here.”

Shiro’s arm comes around Keith’s waist to drag him down onto the blankets with him and Keith goes with it, lying on his back while Shiro drapes himself over him and buries his face into Keith’s neck, taking deep, shuddering breaths. 

There’s a gasp from someone in the shack, followed by Lance saying, “See, I told you! They were doing that when I walked in on them earlier today.”

Keith shifts so he can see past Shiro’s bulk, hand coming up to card through Shiro’s hair when Shiro grumbles at him for it. “Doing what?” he snaps, irritated. “He did the same thing to you after we fought.” 

“What?!” Lance screeches while Hunk, Pidge, and Matt all break off into loud laughter, the sound echoing off the cabin walls a relief compared to the tense silences they rested in before. 

“Oh dear,” Coran says again and beside him Allura hides a smile behind her hand. 

He can even feel Shiro smiling against his neck, but he doesn’t move from his hiding place there. Bastard. 

“He did not!” Lance cries, face flushed and looking over to Allura for some reason. “I mean he scented me, but he didn’t  _ scent me _ .” This makes the three trolls beside him laugh harder. 

“You just said the same thing twice,” Keith frowns. “I don’t understand how there’s a difference between what he’s doing to me and what he did to you.”

Hunk gets ahold of himself before the others do. “Umm, well when Shiro does that stuff to us it’s usually only on the wrists or hair, or through hugs. It’s reassurance that-that we’re friends.” He clears his throat before he continues. “But the neck is a really sensitive place. We may show him our neck as a sign of respect and trust, but getting in close to it like he does to you is more...intimate, I guess?”

As if on cue Shiro’s teeth scrape against Keith’s neck, lingering long enough for Keith to shiver before he moves away, leaving goosebumps in his wake. 

“Oh man,” Pidge says, wrinkling her nose. 

“Shiro, dude. We get it,” Matt says. 

“I told you,” Lance says again.

“I think it’s kinda sweet,” Hunk says and gives Keith a little smile. Keith decides then he likes him. 

“So this,” he gestures between him and Shiro. “It’s just an us thing?”

“Yes,” Allura says. “Shiro’s our friend, but you’re...well.”

“We’re best friends,” Keith says, satisfied. He knew what he has with Shiro is special. He feels a little silly for ever doubting it. 

Shiro leans up on his arm then and it’s a relief to see that his eyes are grey again and he appears to be in less pain than before, in fact everyone else in the shack seems more at ease now. 

“Keith,” Shiro sighs, something both fond and exasperated in his voice.  

“Hi,” Keith says. “Are you feeling better?”   


Shiro nods and turns to look over at the rest of his friends, frowning. It’s clear he wants to say something to them all even though he can’t. Frustration reads off the tension in his shoulders, but determination fills the spark in his eyes. 

And everyone is looking at him expectant and desperately hopeful. Allura had said they haven’t been able to run like they used to on the new moon for the past year, haven’t been able to cut loose and get out of their own skin. 

Whenever Keith feels stressed or like he has too much energy he needs to work off, he likes to work with his hands. Usually that means spending an evening in his shop working on a project, clearing his mind of everything except the next step in creating something. He can’t imagine having all that stress and energy resting inside him, growing and growing with no outlet. 

“Why don’t you all go for a run?” Keith finds himself saying. 

“We  _ can’t _ ,” Pidge says, running a hand through her hair. 

“Why not? The woods are right there.”

There’s a silence, then Matt says, “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“So?” Keith sits up, pushing at Shiro to urge him to stand and following him up. “Go run anyway. Pretend it’s like it was before if you have to. Anything would be better than you all standing around miserable all night.”

“I want to try it,” Hunk says, excited. His eyes are bright as they flicker between Keith and Shiro. “Can we?”

Keith turns to Shiro, leaning his face into Shiro’s neck for no other reason than because it feels right. He pulls back and finds Shiro smiling at him, soft and happy for him in the way that Keith loves. “Go,” Keith says. “Run with your friends through the woods.”

Shiro spares a moment to press his forehead against Keith’s, both of them taking a moment to breathe each other in. Then he pulls away and leaves in a rush that’s too fast for Keith’s eyes to keep track off. Matt, Pidge, Hunk, and Lance follow after him, each becoming their own blurs in their hurry to get out the door. 

Keith, Allura, and Coran all leave the shack at a much slower pace. By the time they are outside in the clearing that faces the woods, the rest of the group is long gone, vanished through the trees and the darkness. 

It’s not long before they hear a cry, loud and triumphant, and Keith recognizes it as Shiro. Other cries follow his, all equally happy and excited. They sound far away, like they all travelled an impossible distance in the short time since they ran out of the shack. 

Beside him, Allura hums. “I haven’t heard that sound in a very long time.”

“A cause for celebration!” Coran chirps, clapping his hands together. “I’ll go bake some celebratory sweets!” He turns on his heel and heads back to the cabin, a hop in his step. 

The cries sound again, harmonizing beautifully and powerfully with each other. It reminds Keith of when he was young, staying up until sunrise waiting on his father’s shift to end, watching the sky light up as the coyotes howl in the distance. 

“Shiro’s eyes were purple tonight,” Keith says. 

Allura goes quiet beside him, letting Keith work it out on his own, probably.

 “I met Shiro on a full moon. I didn’t think about it before, but I remember now. He was different that night. He seemed...dangerous. And tonight-Shiro and everyone else-they were different too.”

“They were strange to you,” Allura says softly. 

“I think they’d be strange to anyone,” Keith says. “Anyone that isn’t them.”

“I’ll give you that.” Allura takes a moment to continue, folding her arms over her chest and shivering as though it’s chilly out. “I’m sure you have more questions, but I need to make sure Coran doesn’t start a fire. He’s not quite as skilled in the kitchen as he likes to think he is.” She turns to the cabin to follow Coran’s trail back into their home. 

Keith knows a dismissal when he hears one, and he can’t help but feel oddly hurt by Allura sending him off right after he helped them. Her voice sounds both kind and tired though, and he figures it must have been as rough of a night for her as it was for everyone else. 

He turns quietly to leave them all in peace and almost makes it back to the truck before Allura calls out to him again. 

“Oh, and Keith?”

He looks back at her, sees her standing on the porch steps, illuminated by the warm glow of the lights from inside the cabin. “Yes?”

“I’m beginning to think you might be a strange thing yourself.”

It sounds like a compliment, so Keith says, “Thank you.” His voice is drowned out by another cry from the wild things running around in the woods. 


	6. Chapter 6

Things begin to change after the night of the new moon. 

For one, Shiro’s friends seem to have accepted that Keith is sticking around and they’re more curious than cautious now. In the days that follow, Keith is presented with several opportunities to ask Shiro’s friends for more information on what it is that makes them so strange, but everytime he thinks he’s ready to do so his throat closes up on him. 

He wants it to be Shiro that finally tells Keith about the mystery that surrounds Shiro and his friends, Keith realizes eventually. Because he knows the secret they hold from him-and most of the rest of the world- is not only theirs, but it’s Shiro’s too. It means waiting, of course, since Shiro still can’t say anything more than Keith’s name, but Keith is more than willing. 

Shiro continues hanging around his shop as always, but now occasionally he’s accompanied by Matt or Allura, who sometimes take it upon themselves to help out with whatever project Keith is working on at the time, and other times are content simply watching Keith and Shiro interact together. 

Keith finds he likes the days when him and Shiro are quietly being watched the least. On those days he often catches Allura and Matt looking at him like they’re expecting something from him, and Keith isn’t so sure he’ll be able to meet whatever expectations they have of him now. Shiro is happy though, and for now that’s enough.

One fateful evening while Keith is taking a day off from his shop to try and fix up some things in his cabin, Hunk and Pidge come over unannounced with Pidge claiming, “We could hear you banging around on things and cursing from Shiro’s place, thought we might come help out before you make the problem worse.”

And there’s another opportunity to finally get some answers right there, practically handed to him on a silver platter. There’s no way a normal person would have been able to hear anything from inside Keith’s cabin unless they were standing right outside, and Pidge and Hunk must know better by now than to give little clues like that away to anyone else. All Keith has to do is open his mouth and ask. 

Pidge is giving him a small smile, patient and welcoming, and Hunk has a basket full of muffins in his arms. Here, in the sunlight and Keith’s ignorance, they look like they could be just two of Keith’s friends. 

They look human, and Keith knows they’re not.

Keith clears his throat, swallows, and says, “I appreciate all the help I can get.”

Neither of them comment on the too long pause before Keith answers, much to his relief. Instead, Pidge claps her hands together and shares a look with Hunk. “It’d probably be better if you hung back, Hunk and I work faster together when left to our own devices.”

“But I haven’t even told you what the problem is.” Keith frowns as Pidge turns from him and walks into his house without invitation. 

Pidge shrugs, not bothering to look back at him. “Figuring that out is part of the fun.”

Hunk shoves the basket of muffins in Keith’s arms. “Here. Have some of these. They’re homemade.” 

“You’re going to fix my stuff and feed me?” Keith asks him, taking the basket. The bottom of it is warm. “What did I do to deserve all this?”

“Are you kidding me? After what you did for us the other night, what you've been doing for Shiro?” Hunk shakes his head. “Man, I’d give you the moon if I could. I’m sure everyone else feels the same.”

Keith doesn’t know what to say to that, but something in his expression makes Hunk chuckle. “What is it?” he asks.

“I don’t know. You all-” he sighs. “You’re acting like I did some great thing, when all I was trying to do was help Shiro.”

“We know that, Keith. That’s part of what makes you so great. I saw the way you look at him, like you’d take on anything for him. Shiro needs that now, more than ever.” Hunk places a heavy hand on Keith’s shoulder. “I’m glad he has you.”

Keith’s chest is tight. “Thank you,” he says. It doesn’t feel like enough.

Hunk’s smile returns, sweet and easy. “Eat. It’ll make you feel better. In the meantime, let me and Pidge handle the rest.”

* * *

By the end of it all, Keith thinks Hunk and Pidge have scoured the ins and outs of Keith’s little home, fixing issues that have been lingering in the back of Keith’s mind for days now and even finding some that Keith didn’t realize he’d had.

“You would have noticed sooner or later,” Pidge assures him. “It’s better to fix it now than wait until it gets cold and realize you’ve got a clogged chimney when you try to light the fireplace only to have smoke blowing right back at you."

Keith shudders. “I don’t think I’m going to use that thing anyway.”

“I dunno, man.” Hunk frowns. “It gets pretty chilly at night come winter.”

“Yeah, and if you need firewood we always have plenty at the cabin,” Pidge adds. 

“Well it’s- it’s old,” Keith flounders. “It might not be safe.”

Pidge puts her hands on her hips. “Keith, I climbed all around inside that thing just now, if there was something wrong with it, I would have noticed.”

Keith jumps at the opportunity to change the subject. “Why did you do all this anyways? No matter how much you think I helped the other night, there really isn’t a need to pay me back, or whatever this is.”

Hunk and Pidge share a look before Pidge gives a little shrug as if to say,  _ why not? _

“That’s just the way it works with us.” Hunk grins. “We help each other out.”  _ Us and we _ , he says, including Keith in on the special bond they all share. 

* * *

 

Despite Keith being surrounded by newly familiar faces, he doesn't fail to notice the lack of one hanging around as often as it had been. The space behind the counter near the cash register where Romelle typically stays to keep an eye on her shop while she visits Keith is noticeably empty, and silences are no longer filled with her inquiring questions.

He has his suspicions as to why she isn't around anymore and it doesn't weigh lightly on him, so the next time he has his shop to himself, Keith doesn't waste any time grabbing Romelle's now finished birdhouse and heading across the street to her salon.

As he approaches, there's no movement from inside to indicate where Romelle might be, but the fluorescent lights shine bright and he can hear pop music playing quietly from the speakers inside.

When he opens the door, the music grows a little in volume and the lights make his eyes squint. "Romelle?"

"Hey, Keith." Her voice comes from somewhere to his right, and when Keith turns to it, she's standing right next to him, gaze focused distantly over his shoulder.

"Jesus," he says, heart skittering. "I didn't see you." He didn't see her from outside or after he came in, despite the wall of windows looking into her shop and the brightly lit room.  _ Strange things. _

"Sorry," she says, quiet. Nervous, Keith realizes, as he watches her twirl a strand of blonde hair in tight circles around her finger. The thought makes his chest give a painful twinge.

"Haven't seen you around much lately," he observes, trying to find a way to break the tension that is suddenly between them. "Has it been busy here?" He cringes after the question. Of course it hasn't been, whatever has been going on between Romelle and Keith's neighbors has kept anyone from wanting to come around and Keith went and rubbed it in her face.

Romelle doesn't seem upset by his slip up, if anything her face softens a fraction and she finally looks into his eyes. "As busy as usual," she says neutrally. "I wanted to give you some time with your new...friends."

"You don't have to do that. It's not a one or the other type situation. Just because they're my friends now doesn't mean you aren't. Besides, you were my friend first." He gives her what he hopes is a kind smile. He's never been very good with those.

Romelle hesitates at first, but then she gives him a careful smile back. "So. We're good? Just like before?"

"Just like before," Keith agrees, relieved when the tension between them evaporates immediately. "I finished your birdhouse."

"You did?" Romelle brightens, clasping her hands together as she eyes the package in Keith's hand. "Can I see?"

Romelle is even more excited than Keith expected about the pink birdhouse Keith made for her. After she takes a moment to inspect it, she squeals and pulls Keith into a near bone crushing one armed hug, holding the birdhouse safely out of the way with her other hand.

"I owe you a haircut now!" she exclaims, and drags Keith by the arm over to one of the chairs, despite his protests.

"Don't shave it all off," he grumbles, defeated, once he's sitting in a black salon chair with a chair cloth draped over him.

"I wouldn't do that to you," Romelle coos, more to his hair than to him. She's holding a water spray bottle in a way that Keith finds vaguely threatening. He flinches when the first spray of water hits him and scowls up at her.

"What are you going to do to it?"

"Just a trim remember," she reassures, pulling away when his hair is damp and clinging to his face and neck. "You want it to grow out so you can do some fun hairstyles with it."

"You mean so you can do some fun hairstyles with it," Keith rolls his eyes. "My idea of styling it is running my fingers through it right after I wake up and leaving like that."

"Yes, yes. I already know you're a wildling." Romelle rolls her eyes right back at him. "But I can style if for you, if you insist."

They fall into silence shortly after, Romelle concentrating on the tasks of chopping away at Keith's hair with deft fingers and Keith content to watch her work. It's when she kneels in front of him to work on his bangs that Keith notices the dark circles under her eyes. Concern eats away at him but he's not sure if it's his place to ask or not.

"Stop twitching so much or I'll give you uneven bangs," Romelle mutters, still concentrating and Keith realizes he had tried to cross his arms while he was thinking.

"You look tired," he blurts before he can talk himself out of it again.

The moment Romelle freezes barely lasts a second before she continues her work. "Why thank you, Keith. That's exactly the thing a lady wishes to hear."

Keith gives her an unimpressed look. "You've been having those dreams again, haven't you?"

The hand with the scissors in it falls limp by Romelle's side. "Yes," she groans. "I don't know why but they haven't stopped. I think they're getting worse."

"What do you see in them?"

"I don't know," she says, anguished. "I'm so tired because I wake up a couple hours after I fall asleep with what I know is a vision, but I don't remember anything I saw in them. I remember feelings, like fear and anger, so I know they’re bad, but I have no idea what it is they're trying to warn me about. It's almost like someone is blocking them."

“Who would do that?” Keith wonders. The idea that Romelle has the ability to see glimpses into the future is still so new to him, he can hardly imagine the thought of someone or something having the ability to stop it. 

“I don’t know. It could be something else entirely. It’s not like I have anyone to ask about these things.” Her eyes narrow at whatever expression is on Keith’s face. “What is it?”

Keith grins at her. “I know someone that could help, but you’re not going to like it.” It takes her a moment but Keith can tell she understands when she sighs through her teeth.

“At least let me finish your haircut before you throw me to the wolves.”

* * *

 

Keith had thought Romelle’s caution was undeserving right up until Allura walks into Sawdust and her entire demeanor goes from pleasant to dangerously neutral. Romelle is more or less the same, though she doesn’t bother to hide her scowl.  _ Ferocious _ , Keith thinks fondly. 

Shiro comes in with Allura, ignoring the tension between the two girls for Keith. He’s been different since the new moon, excited and clingy to Keith, like he can’t help but touch him in some way or another when he’s around. Not that Keith minds. It’s not exactly a hardship to put up with a man that’s at least six-four and massively thick rubbing all over him, though it is a practice in self-control.

Today he’s wearing a cut off tank top and, when he reaches up to run his fingers through Keith’s newly cut hair, the shirt sways forward so Keith can see  _ everything _ . Almost against his will his eyes trace a slow path from the coarse hair surrounding his belly button up his cut abs to his pecs, stopping to stare at the dusky nipple in the center that’s now dangerously close to Keith’s face. 

Keith _ wants _ -

Shiro’s grip on his hair tightens and he gives it a light tug, forcing Keith to make eye contact with him. Caught, Keith flushes and feels his face heat up even more as Shiro’s lips curl into a smirk. Keith licks his lips and Shiro’s eyes follow it, his smirk turning into a smile and Keith-

“Are you two done?” Romelle’s voice breaks in between them, sounding amused. Keith jerks back from Shiro so fast he nearly leaves a chunk of hair behind before Shiro lets go. 

“They always do this,” Allura adds. “It takes them a few minutes to remember anyone else is in the room. It’s precious really.” The animosity between them has eased a fraction while Keith was...distracted. They seem to have formed a mutual understanding in dealing with Keith being a disaster. How kind of them.

Keith clears his throat. “I take it you two know already know each other, then?”

“I do not,” Allura says, while Romelle shakes her head.

“Wait,” Keith frowns. “You two hate each other when you haven’t even met before?”

“I don’t hate her. I don’t know her,” Allura corrects him, then turns to speak directly to Romelle. “You came into territory you knew was claimed and made no attempts to introduce yourself. We were cautious of you.”

“I planned to make introductions, but then I saw him,” Romelle jerks her chin toward Shiro. “He was different than he is now. Angry, evil.”

Keith reaches for Shiro without thought, sliding his fingers through Shiro’s as Shiro grips at him tightly. 

“Wait, you saw him like that? You were there?” Allura says, surprising Keith with her lack of surprise at an evil Shiro. 

“I’m a Seer,” Romelle explains, putting a word to her abilities Keith hadn’t known before. “You knew about him?”

“Yes,” Allura says grimly, sharing a look with Shiro when he growls. “It was his body but someone else had control over his mind. They wanted to see him fight. See him kill.”

Keith’s grip is now just as tight as Shiro’s. “Why would someone do that to him?”

“Entertainment,” Allura says the word like a curse. “They thought it was fun to make him act like the beast they thought he was.”

“Entertainment,” Keith repeats. The lights on the ceiling flicker, causing everyone to turn to Keith. “Sorry,” he says, making his tone light despite the sudden anger roaring inside him. “Guess I’ll need to get Pidge and Hunk to take a look at the electrical work here too.”

Shiro reaches down to nuzzle into Keith’s hair as the lights flick back on and stay that way this time, and Romelle and Allura share a look that’s infinitely more friendly than their first.

“Well, now that the misunderstandings are all cleared up,” Allura begins with a hesitant smile toward Romelle. “Keith tells me you need my help?”

* * *

 

The closer it gets to the night of the full moon, the more restless Keith becomes. He tries to exercise by jogging, but that only seems to make it worse because all he can think about is how he wants to push himself further, faster. He tries to work more, but his fingers are too clumsy in his impatience and he ends up making more of a mess than anything. 

It’s affecting Shiro too. He’s restless like Keith is, but more than that, there’s something wild about him coming through, until he starts to remind Keith of that first night they saw each other. He accidentally breaks a wood shelf one time, as if he doesn’t know his own strength, when he growls it’s somehow even louder and deeper than before,  and Keith often catches him watching Keith with a heavy sort of intensity. It fills Keith with an urge to run so strong that a couple times Keith nearly drops what he’s doing and takes off right then and there. He knows deep down that Shiro would chase him if he did, and that makes resisting the urge to run even more difficult.

* * *

 

Keith is woken up in the early morning of the day before the full moon by the sound of someone shuffling around downstairs, below his bedroom loft. He shivers, pulling the covers tighter around him as he listens. The footsteps are rapid and alternate between heavy and light. It makes Keith wonder if Shiro has been hurt and is limping down there. 

He almost calls out to check if he’s okay until he hears a voice that is definitely not Shiro speak.

“Are you sure this the right place?” It’s male, raspy and unfamiliar.

“Yes,” A higher pitched voice answers. There’s two of them. Two strangers in Keith’s home. “It reeks of Alpha in here. It has to be him.”

_ Alpha _ , Keith wonders, pulse racing.  _ What is Alpha? _

Whatever it is, he knows his cabin is not very large and it won’t be long before they decide to climb the stairs to his loft. As quietly as he can, Keith slides out of bed, grabbing his dagger from under his mattress as he goes. 

He creeps along the wall, hoping the shadows will conceal him as he peers over the edge of the railing onto the main floor of the cabin. He sees them lurking in his kitchen, there’s two of them, tall and wearing long hooded cloaks that hide their features. As Keith watches, one of them reaches out to trace a finger across Keith’s kitchen table. His fingers are bone thin and grey.

They’re both turned away from him at the moment, but there’s no telling how long they will stay like that and Keith doesn’t want to risk them hearing him as he climbs down the stairs. 

He leaps over the railing, hearing their twin exclamations of surprise as he lands painfully on his ankle. It takes him a second too long before he can get back up and start running toward the back door and he only makes it a few steps before a cold hand smacks down his shoulder, trapping him in a painful, terrifyingly strong grip. 

“I’ve got him!” The one with the higher pitch voice yells, pulling Keith back toward them. 

“Let go,” Keith cries. The arm with the dagger in it is the one the man is crushing in his hand, so Keith stabs blindly at him, panicked and angry, and feels the dagger sink into the flesh of what he can only guess is the man’s thigh. 

The man shrieks, the weight of his hand vanishing suddenly as he lets go of Keith. Keith lets go of the dagger in order to keep running. He still doesn’t want to take his chances against the two of them, and he needs to make a beeline for Shiro’s cabin. 

He’s in the cabin hallway one second and outside in the next. The early morning sun lighting up the sky in pale blue as it sprinkles off the drops of dew on the ground, the nature around him showing signs that it’s going to be a bright, sunny day while Keith runs for his life. 

Keith slips on the wet ground, twisting his ankle for the second time and feeling a sharp pain crawl up his leg. Rather than fight against it, Keith rolls with the fall and surges up on his feet, limping now. He doesn’t have time to stop, Shiro’s cabin is just up the hill. If he can make it there in time, he’ll-

A shock spreads through him, hitting him in the middle of his back and shooting electric pain all throughout his muscles. Keith crumbles before he can even let out a scream. Footsteps approach him as he writhes in the aftershocks, unable to more than gasp and twitch in pain. 

A bare foot, nastily thin and greyish like the hand kicks at his ribs, hard enough to roll him over onto his back to face the ghoulish face of the man above him, if he could even be considered a man, with his golden snake-like eyes and unnaturally sharp teeth. 

He sneers down at Keith as Keith tries to get his body to cooperate with him again. 

_ Move, _ he tries to command his limbs, _ move, move, move- _

The man holds his hands out, cupping them with some space in between, like he’s holding an invisible ball. As Keith watches in horror, violet sparks begin to form in that space and crackle in the air around his hands. 

Laughing silently, the man turns his hands toward Keith and shoots a bolt of lightning right at Keith’s heart. Keith doesn’t have time to scream before his world turns white. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was the chapter that inspired me to write this story and I'm so, so excited to finally be able to share it with you all! I had to get up and pace around a couple times while I was writing because things were getting too intense xD  
> Anyway! I have a few questions I'll put in the end notes, read AFTER you finish the chapter bc there are spoilers!
> 
> Triggar warning for blood and gore in this chapter, even though I tried to keep it vague the tag can count for a few different moments in this chapter so be warned! And let me know if you feel like I should add anything else.

The first thing Keith notices when he wakes up is how much everything hurts. He feels like a semi truck ran over him, then backed up and ran over him again. Whatever he's laying against isn't helping either. There’s something cold enough to seep through his thin pajamas and uneven, hard in some places and soft in others. When he opens his eyes he sees the bright sunlit sky through several steel bars.

_A cage_ , he wonders, and then, with sudden painful clarity, he remembers the man with lightning in his hands.

Keith sits up too fast, jamming his elbow into one of the steel rods when he uses his arm to push himself up and having to fight off a wave of dizziness when his body isn't ready for the sudden movements.

Once the world stops spinning around him, he takes in his surroundings. He was right about being in a cage, a large one too, with its long walls of steel bars and high roof, it appears to be more fit for a bear standing up on two legs than it is for Keith. Maybe two bears, Keith reconsiders, as he stretches his legs out to try to ease the ache in them. There’s dirt and grass beneath him, like someone had hammered the bars into the ground and placed a steel roof on top. Unfortunately, they did too good of a job placing the bars. They’re so close together Keith has no chance of trying to slip through them. 

The cage is on the outskirts of what appears to be a hastily made campsite in the middle of the woods. There are two large tents, both of them in a weird state of half-made and half-down, like whoever was setting them up decided halfway through that they were good enough to sleep in and left the rest of it hanging.

There's the remains of a bonfire between the two tents and Keith with fresh ashes on it, and two tree stumps that must serve as seats for what Keith assumes must be the two men that broke into his cabin last night. There are no signs of them anywhere around. Keith is thankful for that small mercy at least. He has no doubt they'll be back, unless they plan on leaving Keith to rot in the cage, but at least he has a few moments to himself to get his bearings. 

He feels around the cage first, testing each and every rod with the small hope of finding at least one that he can push out enough for him to squeeze through. The metal doesn't move an inch underneath his fingers. He does find the lock though, it's thick, with a large keyhole. It clangs loudly and uselessly against the cage whenever Keith tugs and shakes it in a desperate attempt to get it to unlatch.

It doesn't work and Keith sags against the uncomfortable, cool steel with a sigh. He's trapped in a cage, in the middle of the woods, still in his pajamas, at the mercy of one man that Keith stabbed and another that can hold lightning in his hands, helpless to do anything but wait for them to return and do whatever it is they have planned to him.

He slides down onto the floor, curling his arms around his legs and rests his forehead on his knees. He wishes Shiro were here.

The men had come into his home near sunrise. Judging by the position of the sun, Keith guesses it must have been early afternoon whenever Keith woke. It's at least another couple of hours before Keith hears the signs of footsteps coming from somewhere in the trees.

Keith stands as soon as he hears them, wanting to be able to face the men head on and demand answers, but what he sees coming out of the forest nearly makes the ground fall out from under his feet again.

He first notices the man that had struck him down last night, still wearing the thick cloak he had on when he captured Keith. Floating behind him, unconscious and encased in what appears to be ropes back out of thick black shadows, is Shiro.

"Shiro!" Keith cries, running back to the door of the cage as the cloaked man lumbers closer. "What did you do to him?"

The cloaked man glares at him, wheezing deep uneven breaths. He doesn't speak until he's standing on the other side of the bars from Keith. He has a dark purplish bruise underneath the grey skin of both of his eyes and deep scratches over his right cheek. Shiro put up a fight, Keith thinks feeling a surge of pride as he sees the injuries.

"More or less the same as what I did to you," the cloaked man says, voice pitched low in a whispering rasp, not unlike what Keith imagines a snake would sound like if it could talk. "As much as I would enjoy putting him down like the beast that he is. My master has more in her plans for him." When he chuckles, Keith can smell the rot on his breath and has to fight off nausea.

"Who is your master? What does she want with him?"

The man's chuckles cut off. "My Lady’s plans are of no concern to you, boy. All you need to do is play your part in them." He eyes Keith nastily. "Not that you have much of a choice. Move to the back of the cage. now."

Keith draws his shoulders back and gives the man a glare of his own. "No."

The man's lips draw back over his lips in a sneer revealing sharp, yellow teeth. "Do it or I'll shock you again." When Keith hesitates, he raises one of his hands and sparks of lightning fly out of the center of his palm.

Knowing it isn't an empty threat and not wanting to pass out when Shiro might need his help, Keith backs up to the far end of the cage, watching as the cloaked man pulls a large silver key out of his cloak opens the door so Shiro can float in on his bed of strange shadows.

Once Shiro's body is completely in the cage, the door slams shut with a clang loud enough that it makes Keith jump. The lock slides into place and the shadows disappear from Shiro's body, dumping him onto the ground too fast for Keith to catch him.

It doesn't take Keith long to figure out that being held prisoner is rather boring. Once he checks Shiro over and confirms that, besides a few strange claw shaped scratches and bruises, he appears to be okay-if one could be okay when they were trapped in a large cage by something that was most definitely not human-there isn't much left for him to do but try to find a semi-comfortable sitting position and wait.

"What do you want," Keith asks for the third time in what he thinks is probably less than an hour. The strange man ignores him...again.

He has a large book in his hands, old and worn with a binding made out of leather that must be more worthy of his attention than Keith is. He's muttering to himself occasionally as he reads it and the bits Keith can make out are spoken in a harsh and guttural sounding language Keith doesn't recognize.

More time passes. Keith eventually pulls Shiro's head into his lap, running his hands through the long strands of Shiro's hair and gently working out the tangles as he goes. "When we get out of this, I'm going to take you to Romelle's to get a haircut," he promises in a whisper, running his thumb over Shiro's brows.

As the sun begins to sink, the cold makes itself more known. Luckily for Keith, Shiro gives off enough heat to keep most of it at bay. The cloaked man isn't so lucky and Keith flinches when he uses a careless wave of his hand to throw sparks on the campfire, sending flames flickering high in the air almost immediately.

The movements must disturb Shiro because he tosses restlessly in Keith's lap, frowning in his sleep. "Keith," he murmurs. "Keith, Keith, Keith..."

"I'm here. Not going anywhere," Keith assures him, and eyes the bars caging them in grimly.  "Neither of us are."

The sky is changing into warm evening colors of orange and pink by the time the cloaked man finally snaps his book closed. Keith, who had been dozing restlessly as he tried to ignore the cold and his rumbling stomach and dry mouth and overall sense of hopelessness, snaps into full awareness as the man takes purposeful steps closer to them. 

“What do you want?” Keith figures if the man is ever going to answer him, now would be the time. He tightens his grip on Shiro, still unconscious in his lap, because he has a feeling he isn’t going to like whatever answer the man gives him.

“What any good hunter wants.” The man’s cloak billows out around him as he crouches down to Keith’s level. Keith can see the yellowing, sharp teeth showing underneath the shadows of his hood. “To catch his prey.”

“We’re your prey?” Keith scoffs. In his lap, Shiro breathing goes unsteady and he starts twitching, little by little. 

“The beast you have in your lap is my prey,” the cloaked man answers. He drags a finger through the dirt in front of the cage, drawing what looks to Keith like four uneven triangles and connecting them with an X. “But I’d say you’re more of his prey than mine.” He finishes his drawing with three lines, shaped like an arrow head coming out of the bottom of the X and Keith feels something cold settle heavily in his stomach.

“What is that,” he whispers, unable to take his eyes from the symbol even as Shiro begins to whine. 

“Nothing for you to be concerned with,” the cloaked man says, and then several things happen at once. 

The man pulls his other hand out from beneath his cloak, holding a long, wicked looking dagger, and raises it high over his head. Then, with a hissing cry, he slashes a line through the palm that had drawn the symbol. 

Keith rears back, pulling Shiro with him as far away from the cloaked man as he can get before his back hits metal bars. The blood that comes from his hand is black, and as it drips down from his palm, he begins a chant in the same guttural language that from before.

The black blood hisses as it lands on the ground and fills the symbol with unnatural, almost sentient movements. 

The cloaked man’s chant pitches up in a climactic tone and Shiro starts to scream. 

It’s a sudden, loud sound that pierces straight through Keith’s chest like a bullet. He clutches at Shiro’s head, covering his ears in a desperate attempt to block out whatever it is the cloaked man is chanting at him. 

“Stop it,” Keith cries, over the chanting and Shiro’s screaming. “Stop!”

Over the cloaked man’s shoulder the flames from the campfire rise high enough that Keith can see them flickering as they light up the clearing. The cloaked man’s chant falters as he casts a glance over his shoulder. He returns to the symbol quickly, slamming his cut palm down onto the blood soaked symbol as both his chanting and Shiro’s screaming cut off abruptly.

“And now we wait,” the cloaked man mutters darkly. 

Keith turns his full attention to Shiro as the man stands and shambles away from their cage. The flames are lighting up the clearing enough that Keith can see a thin layer of sweat covering his face. Keith grabs the hem of his shirt and wipes Shiro’s face with it, a useless maneuver, especially with the heat rising steadily in the clearing, but Keith can’t stop moving.

His shirt hides Shiro’s eyes from him for only a brief moment, but they’re open when Keith’s shirt slides out of the way. His pupils are blown wide, the black of them drowning out all the grey as he seems to look through Keith rather than at him. 

He growls, a deep rumble that sounds more confused than angry.

“You’re okay,” Keith tells him, unsure of whether or not he’s telling the truth. “You’re okay.”

At the sound of Keith’s voice Shiro’s eyes focus and his pupils shrink down to pinpricks. “Keith,” he croaks. “Where are we? What happened?”

Keith starts. “You- you’re talking,” he says, unhelpfully.

“Not for long,” comes the sinister reply from the cloaked man over by the campfire.

The shift in Shiro is instant. One moment he’s staring up at Keith in awe, and the next he’s rolling onto his knees, hand braced on the ground to keep his balance as he glowers toward the voice. 

“Macidus,” he growls. “I thought I had killed you.”

The cloaked man-Macidus- takes his attention away from the fire long enough to sneer at them. “I cannot be killed. Not as long as I have my master’s blessing on my side.”

The fire and Macidus are both equal threats of destruction in Keith’s eyes, but he can’t pull his attention away from Shiro, from the bright strength in his eyes and the power in his stance as he stands at full height.

“If you are alive,” he begins, the threat low in his voice. “Then you are able to die.”

Macidus doesn’t look away from the tall fire this time. “Maybe. But not by the hands of a beast like you.”

“He’s not a beast,” Keith snaps, finally pulling out of his daze.

Macidus’s answering laughter chills him. “We shall see,” he replies, face tilted up toward the darkening sky.

 Shiro looks too and the fierce expression crumbles away from his face. “Keith,” he breathes before raising his voice. “Macidus, you can keep me if you want, but you have to let Keith go.”

Keith opens his mouth to protest but Macidus beats him to it.

“I think not,” he says. “I think I’ll leave him in there with you until sunrise and then drag what's left of him before the council as proof that you and the rest of your pack should be put down.”

Shiro snarls and grabs at the bars of the cage. He rears back immediately, crying out as the smell of burning flesh surrounds them. 

“Shiro!” Keith cries, catching his wrist and pulling it safely away from the bars to inspect it. There’s an angry red line down the middle of his palm, as if the bars had been hot when he touched them. But that’s impossible. If anything, when Keith had felt them before they were cool from the chilly breeze. 

Macidus is laughing again and Keith turns his attention away from Shiro’s injury long enough to glower at him for finding humor in Shiro’s pain. He imagines briefly how satisfying it would be to punch his smile, or stab him, like he did his friend. 

Macidus’s laughter cuts off as the fire pops and a red spark catches on the bottom of his cloak. Shiro makes an amused nose as he dances around to stomp it out. Satisfied at karma’s quick work, Keith returns his attention to Shiro’s palm. 

Only to find the red mark has disappeared entirely. “Umm.”

“I heal fast,” Shiro says, his fingers curling to hide his palm before he pulls away from Keith’s grip. “It shouldn’t be me you’re worried about anyway. When the moon comes out I don’t know if I’m going to be able to control myself. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to shift.”

Keith takes a moment to process this. He thinks of stories his father used to tell him when he was a child, of the way all of Shiro’s friends spoke of the moon and its importance, of Shiro on the first night, his eyes violet and glowing as he growled at Keith. He thinks of strange things. “You think you’ll hurt me.”

“I don’t want to, Keith. You have to know I’d never-” Shiro cuts off with an anguished sound and Keith can’t resist cupping Shiro’s face in his hands and pulling him down so they can press their foreheads together. He is not scared of Shiro. He isn’t. “Macidus was right about me being a beast, at least partially,” Shiro says lowly. “It’s always been a part of me. The instinct to run and hunt and...do other things that beasts do. Before they took me, my beast and human side were one and the same. They worked together. The beast would have more control during the full moon, but I could resist it if I needed to. But they’ve been forced apart for too long and you’re going to be the first thing I see afterward and I don’t know if I can stop it,” he admits in a rush, voice shaking. 

Everything about him is shaking actually. He practically vibrates in Keith’s arms, unable to hold still as the sky continues to darken around them. 

“You won’t hurt me because the beast as you call it is still you,” Keith says, sure of it in the face of the uncertain look Shiro sends him. “Your mannerisms these past few weeks, the growling and the-the touching. That was the beast wasn’t it?”

Shiro nods. “I was there but it was like...I was underwater, I guess? Sometimes I’d have more control but most the time it was the beast’s mind trapped in my human body. The curse kept me in the worst, weakest state possible.”

“You never hurt me then,” Keith says and when Shiro gives him a doubtful look he adds, “Not on purpose, at least.”

 “It’s different tonight. The beast has been trapped just as I was and I can feel it rising underneath, eager,” he closes his eyes briefly and when he opens them Keith can see something shifting in them, dark and wild. “Hungry,” he rumbles. 

Shiro pulls back from him suddenly and Keith catches sight of the moon, full and bright, above the treetops. Shiro falls to his knees, clutching at his chest and breathing heavily, whining with each exhale. 

Keith wants to go to him but his feet are rooted to the ground and won’t listen to him. 

“The hunters are supposed to protect people from creatures like me,” Shiro calls, voice still in a deep rasp. “What would your precious council do if they found out you knowingly let a human die?”

“And how would they find out?” Macidus sneers. He’s standing a good distance away from the raging fire now. “It’s just the three of us here. And I’m sure they’ll find enough of your little friend in your stomach after we gut you to disprove anything you might say otherwise.”

Shiro lips part to show teeth, longer and sharper than they were moments before. “My pack will find us, they are probably on their way as we speak.”

“Oh no,” Macidus says, squashing the hope in Keith before it has a chance to bloom. “No, they’ll be quite preoccupied right about now. Going through their first transformation in a year and without their precious Alpha around to help them through it? I’d say the fallen princess will have her hands quite full protecting the town from the onslaught they’re about to unleash on Lion’s Creek. I do hope she fails. All the more reason for the Council to send in the executioners.”

Shiro _roars_ , slamming his hand onto the ground and clawing at the ground with long thick nails. “When I get out of here I’m going to _kill_ you, actually kill you this time. I’ll make it _slow_ . Drag your screams out as I _tear you apart_.”

Keith takes a step back instinctively and Shiro’s head snaps over to him, freezing him in place all over again. Keith can’t school his expression in time to hide it from Shiro, and whatever he sees in Keith causes some of the tension to evaporate in Shiro. His expression clears, though the wild look in his eyes remains, as does the new sharpness in his teeth and nails. 

_My_ , Keith thinks, _what big_ -

“Keith,” Shiro sighs, sounding more himself and less the beast Macidus wants him to be. “I don’t want to hurt you, you have to know that okay? But I can’t-” He lurches forward suddenly, pressing his forehead into the dirt with a pained groan. 

“I know,” Keith says, and sinks down to his knees on Shiro’s level when his body starts to obey him again. A thought occurs to him. A memory. “Do you remember what you said to me when you taught me how to swim?”

“That was-” Shiro takes a gasping breath as his skin begins to ripple. “So long ago.”

Keith swallows and nearly chokes from how dry his mouth is. “Yeah. I remember it like it was yesterday, though.” He shuffles forward on his knees, his hand reaching out and hovering hesitantly in the air between them. “I was really bad at it. I wanted to give up around the second time you had to save me from drowning, but you were so sure that I’d get it if I tried just one more time.” They both laugh. Shiro’s is echoed with little growls, but that’s okay. “You said that, even if I gave up on myself, you weren’t going to give up on me. Ever.” Keith’s hand lands on Shiro’s shoulder, clutching at it. “I’m not going to give up on you either, Shiro. I know it feels overwhelming right now, but I won’t let you drown. We’ll get through this, together.”

Shiro groans, his mouth hanging open because his teeth are now too big for it to close. “Keith, Keith, Keith,” he rumbles, sounding like the Shiro Keith’s known for the past few weeks. “Keith, I l-”

Shiro crumbles forward again with a cry as the ripples in his skin intensify. 

Keith’s cry follows Shiro’s as he tries to pull Shiro back in his lap, feeling helpless. “It’s alright. You’re okay,” he babbles. “We’re gonna get through this.” 

He feels Shiro’s muscles and bones moving like liquid under his hands. Something cracks and Shiro lashes his arm out, shoving Keith away from him. 

He’s strong, inhumanly strong, and the force of the push has Keith flying back to the other end of their cage. His back slams into the metal moments before his head does and everything goes fuzzy for awhile. 

As he falls limp onto the ground he hears a distant whisper. It’s not Shiro and not particularly male or female, but it sounds familiar and comforting. Keith tries to focus on it, to figure out where it’s coming from but his thoughts scatter away from him. 

He can hear sounds from Shiro’s end of the cage too. His sharp gasps followed by steadily cracking bones. He hears Macidus, distant like the mysterious voice is, calling out, his voice pitched high in a panic. Strangely, even though the sun won’t be up for hours, the clearing is getting brighter and brighter. 

Because of it, Keith can make out the blurry shape of Shiro growing and growing and growing as he becomes covered in blackness. 

It’s hot, Keith realizes and looks over toward the fire, ignoring the pain that rocks down his neck and spine as he moves. The fire has grown to a monstrous size, flickering high above the treetops, the tallest flame almost looks like it’s lapping at the moon. The voice in his head becomes louder until what sounds like several voices are chanting in Keith’s head, calling out for him. 

Something huge lands on his thigh. Keith feels the heavy pressure of it moments before the pain kicks in and snaps him out of his daze. He’s hurting, his head and back from landing on the metal bars but also his thigh in a sharper, different way.

He finds out why when he turns his head from the fire to inspect it and finds that the beast has fully taken over Shiro. He’s a wolf, or vaguely shaped like a wolf if they were three times in size and could stand on two legs. He’s mostly black, with white on his nose and underbelly that Keith can clearly see since he’s now towering over Keith, taking up nearly all the space of the cage they’re trapped in. 

He’s huge, having to crouch down instead of standing on his two hind legs and his paw, easily twice the size of Keith’s waist, has a deathgrip on Keith’s thigh as he shakes his head back and forth, jostling Keith as he does. 

“Shiro?” Keith croaks. Shiro stills but otherwise doesn’t seem to hear Keith. His eyes are closed and his lips are pulled back in a snarl. A trail of drool drips off his lips and onto Keith’s stomach where his shirt had ridden up while he was being jostled. “Shiro,” Keith repeats, desperate, and lets out a small cry of pain when Shiro’s grip on his tightens, his claws digging into flesh. 

Shiro’s eyes fly open, huge and violet. He stares a Keith for a tense moment before he leans down and noses at Keith’s neck, using his nose to force Keith to tilt his head back as he sniffs at him. One bite from those powerful jaws, especially around Keith’s neck, and it’ll all be over for him. Keith trembles in Shiro’s grasp and tries to focus on the comforting voice still whispering in the back of his head. 

Shiro’s grip on his thigh disappears as he pulls away, still towering over Keith but no longer touching him, and sniffs at the air. His snout dips down toward Keith’s thigh, where he can feel warm blood seeping into his boxers. 

Keith gasps when he sees Shiro’s tongue, long and red, dart out to lap at the cuts on his thigh. _He really is going to eat me_ , Keith despairs.

The chanting in his head is so loud it sounds as though the voice is right next to him, calling to him, pleading with him for something Keith doesn’t know how to give. Shiro stops licking him long enough to run his tongue over his teeth and stains them red with Keith’s blood. Keith wishes he would have started with his neck instead of his leg so he wouldn’t have to feel it all. 

A sob slips past his lips when Shiro’s jaw opens as he starts to move toward Keith’s thigh again and the sudden sound must startle Shiro because he leaps back from Keith- or tries to anyway. Because the cage bars still there, still covered in whatever it was that burned Shiro earlier. 

Keith knows the moment Shiro makes contact with the cage because he roars, loud enough that the world around them shakes and Keith’s head blooms with more pain. Rather than scare Shiro away from the bars it only angers him, and Keith watches in horror as he rams himself into the steel over and over again, until flesh and fur begin to smoke.

Keith turns toward the chanting voice, toward campfire with its flames that touch the sky as Macidus stares up at it in shock. On his stomach, with one hand outstretched through the bars toward the fire, Keith cries, “Help us!” 

The highest point in the flame arcs down and rushes toward him. Keith doesn’t have time to move before it greets him, the flames warm but not burning at they brush up against his hand and spread all around the cage. Behind him, Shiro whines returns to hover over Keith, pressing close. 

_You answered_ , the fire whispers to him, joyful. _We’ve been calling you._  

_Don’t hurt us_ , Keith silently begs. 

_Never._

Then the fire consumes them. 

The fire keeps its promise and though it begins to burn through the cage and even Keith’s clothes, the warmth of it never hurts Keith. Shiro continues to whine in his ear, but they sound more confused than pained. Keith reaches back and runs a hand through the soft fur on Shiro’s head as he watches the steel bars glow red, then white before they start to melt away. He doesn’t feel scared anymore. 

When it’s over, Keith are Shiro are left in sitting in the ashes of what was once their cage. Nothing else around them has burned besides the blackened ground they rest on. With its job done, the fire returns to its place in the pit, becoming a normal campfire once more. 

Macidus is still there, trying to gather his things in a hurry, blabbering in that language he used earlier. He sounds panicked. Keith thinks about asking the fire if it would be so kind as to burn Macidus alive, but then Shiro stalks forward and Keith decides to let him have this one. 

Keith doesn’t look away as Shiro reaches his target-despite Macidus trying to run and not getting very far- and attacks. Instead he stands in the remains of the cage he’d woken up in, naked and covered in soot, and watches as Shiro makes good on his promise to Macidus earlier. 

When Macidus lies dead beneath him, Shiro stands on both legs and throws his head back, howling beautifully and haunting to the moon. On his second howl the sound of other wolves join, distant but growing closer. A need pulls at Keith and he throws his head back and howls along with them. 

Together as a pack, they sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all liked it!! A few quick questions:
> 
> -Did you guess what was going on with Keith's magics or Shiro's curse? (it's okay if you did I didn't try too hard to be subtle lol I'm just kinda curious)
> 
> -would you kill me if the next chapter was a flash back with kidSheiths bc I really wanna do that shiro teaching keith to swim scene now
> 
> -How umm, spicy do y'all want this fic to get? There's (spoilers) probably gonna be a sex scene eventually but idk if it should be vanilla and kinda vague or if I should up the rating with them? alsosinceshiro'sawerewolfdowewantTHATtocomeintoplayornah xD  
> I'm kind of up in the air right now with how that aspect of their relationship will go down so I was just looking for feed back for those of you that have an opinion <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry for the long delay, I was working on some other writing projects and then needed to step away from writing all together for a bit after I finished them to give myself a break. Unfortunately there might be another delay for a few weeks before the next chapter because I have one writing project that is almost done and I'd really like to focus on that to mark it off my to-do list. I adore this story though (in fact I can honestly say it's my favorite current WIP) so it's not going anywhere, I promise! Also I did receive your feedback about the "spice" level of this fic and have included that into the outline xD 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for sticking with me with this fic! Enjoy some kid!Sheiths <3

“Are we there yet?” Keith asks after what he figures must have been a decent enough pause between the last time he asked. He’d waited through at least six songs, listening to his dad sing along with the slow, sad country love songs he loved so much while Keith entertained himself by hovering his hand outside the open window and pretending it was a spaceship flying through space. 

Space is something he had recently began to learn about in school and Keith thought it was the  _ coolest _ . The endless miles of the unknown, the planets, and the stars. So. Cool. 

His dad makes him wait until the chorus of the song finishes before he answers. Keith doesn’t blame him. The radio in the new truck his dad bought after his promotion to fire chief sounds a lot better than it did in his old beat down car. “Almost buddy,” his dad says, turning the radio down so it’s quiet background noise. “Are you excited?”

“I don’t know what I should be excited about,” Keith grouches, tugging the seat belt strap away from his neck. “You won’t even tell me what we’re doing.”

His dad chuckles. “That’s because it would ruin the surprise! Don’t you like surprises?”

Keith thinks of the surprise spelling bee his teacher made his class take last week in school. How a boy much bigger than him liked to shout when he jumped out at Keith while he wasn’t paying attention, usually followed by a shove that left Keith hurting for days afterward. “Not usually,” he says, turning his face to watch the trees as they pass them. They’re much greener out here than they are back closer to home.

His dad takes Keith’s lack of excitement in stride. “Well, I’m sure you’ll like this one,” he says, and reaches over to mess up Keith’s hair, laughing when Keith squacks and bats him away.

It’s another ten songs- with a stop at a gas station that only has two pumps- before the road begins to thin and curve and the trees around them grow denser with each mile.  The air is different out here. Keith pushes the seat belt strap behind him so he can stick is head out the window, taking deep breaths of the warm forest air as the wind whips his hair all around. Beside him, his dad belts out a harmony with Dolly Parton on the radio.

Eventually they do arrive at their destination. A small cabin, in a small clearing in the middle of the woods. There’s a pond fairly close to it and another, much larger cabin up the hill, but the tiny cabin draws Keith’s attention more than anything. The sight of it causes something to rise up in him. A light, warm feeling. Comfort. 

“Where are we?” he asks, leaning forward and pressing his hands against the dash so he can get a better look.

“Keith, this…” His dad takes a deep breath, pushes it out slow. “This is where I met your mom.”

* * *

Surprises, Keith decides as he explores all the nooks and crannies of the cabin, can be a wonderful thing. He tells his father as much when he discovers the bed in his already furnished bedroom is a full size bigger than the one he has at home. 

“You can thank the Shiroganes for that,” his dad says, sitting down on his mattress on the opposite end of where Keith is jumping to test the bounce of his new bed. His body still jerks every time Keith lands but he only puts his hand down next to him for support and smiles as his eyes follow Keith up and down. 

After a few jumps, Keith determines his mattress is bouncy enough and when he falls from his next jump, he curls his feet underneath him in the air so he lands in a sitting position. “The Shiroganes?” he pants. 

His dad points out Keith’s bedroom window toward the large cabin up the hill, past the pond. “Our neighbors, a couple and their grandson. They’ve been helping me take care of this place while I’m away.”

“So you’ve had this place awhile then?” Keith wonders, slumping back against his pillows. 

His dad gets a strange, distant expression on his face Keith recognizes from whenever he used to ask about his mom. He’s learned that it’s a topic to be avoided, but some days it’s harder to control his curiosity than others. “I’ve had this place since before you were born,” his dad says, running a hand over his mouth and stubble. 

“Oh.” Keith hesitates, watching his dad watching him before he asks, “Then why haven’t you brought me here before now?”

It’s his dad’s turn to hesitate now. Keith fully expects him to brush Keith off like he always does when certain things he doesn’t like talking about are brought up, but instead his dad quietly says, “I wasn’t ready.”

* * *

His dad says the Shiroganes still live in the cabin up the hill, but during Keith’s first visit to the cabin, Keith doesn’t see any signs of them other than the occasional light turned on in one of the second floor windows. 

“They’re very private,” his dad explains when Keith asks about it. “They like their space.”

Keith’s okay with that. He enjoys having his father to himself for once, with neither of them having to worry about the long hours Keith dad works at the fire station, even longer after he became the new fire chief. 

As each day passes the bags beneath his dad’s eyes that Keith had grown used to slowly start to disappear and life bleeds back into him. His dad teaches Keith how to woodwork and Keith loves it. Even if his dad won’t let him make any of the cuts, Keith takes his job as the measurer very seriously. 

They make a birdhouse together. It’s terribly ugly and too flimsy to be a safe home for any bird, but Keith and his dad sit it in the center of their little kitchen table so they can look at it with pride every time they eat. 

One night, Keith wakes up from a nightmare, one that leaves him breathing heavily and staring up at his ceiling with wide eyes even though he can’t remember it. His room is brightly lit and when Keith gives up on going back to sleep and gets out of bed, he can see the reflection of the full moon in the dark water of the pond, huge and silver. 

He leaves his room to find his dad, pausing in the hallway when he sees both his dad's door and the back porch door wide open. Curious, Keith pads through the hallways and his dad’s room, noting his dad’s empty, messy bed as he passes it on his way outside. 

His dad is sitting on the porch stairs, elbows on his knees as he stares out into the dark woods behind their cabin with thoughtful eyes. 

“Dad?” Keith murmurs when his dad doesn’t notice him at first.

His dad jerks. “Keith,” he says, sounding sheepish. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

Keith frowns at him. “So are you.”

“You have me there.” His dad shoots him a little smile, but the look behind his eyes is sad. It worries Keith. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, moving forward to sit down on the steps beside his dad. It’s a tight fit, but his dad scoots over to make room. Keith presses into his dad’s warmth to fight off the strange chill in the summer air. 

“I’m fine,” his dad says, and Keith gets a strange prickling sensation over his skin like he always does when people say things they don’t mean. His dad continues talking before Keith can call him out on it, and distracts Keith with his next words. 

“Did you know I met your mom out here?”

“You said that when we first got here,” Keith says and yawns. “That’s why you never told me about this place, right?”

“Always knew you were too smart for your own good.” His dad wraps an arm around Keith’s shoulders and Keith gladly burrows into him. “I meant I was on this very porch when I met her. It was a night like this, and the moon was so full and bright I could see everything around me except into the woods. See how they’re covered in shadows, right now? I was squinting at it, trying to figure out why it was so dark out there when your mom stumbled out from between the trees over there.” 

Keith follows the direction his dad’s finger points in, mouth agape as he looks into the woods. “Was she hurt?”

“Badly, yes. I had to carry her inside to help make her better.”

“What hurt her? Was it a bear?” Keith demanded, angry for this woman he had never met. 

“No.” His dad swallowed. “It was a person. A bad person.”

Keith fisted his dad’s shirt, casting a wary glance into the darkness of the woods. “Why would a person want to hurt her?”

“Well Keith, sometimes people have cruelty in their hearts. Sometimes that cruelty makes them do bad things to people or creatures even when they don’t deserve it.”

“Oh.” Keith thought of the boy at school who liked to scream and shove him. “And you saved her from this person?”

“Oh no.” His dad laughs outright. “By then she had already saved herself. I just helped with the cleanup.”

“Huh.” Keith tries to imagine it. It’s hard when he doesn’t even know what his mother looks like. “And then you guys had me, right?”

“Well not right away. We had to get to know each other first. And fall in love-”

Keith wrinkles his nose. 

“-but yes. Eventually, we had you.”

Something hard settles inside Keith’s throat. “And then she left us.”

His dad’s eyes close as a pained expression washes over his face. Keith immediately feels bad. He wishes he could take his own words away. “She didn’t want to go.”

“Then she should have stayed!”

“Things aren’t always that simple, Keith. I wish they were but it’s not always black or white, sometimes there’s several shades of grey in between.” His dad rubs a hand over his face. His eyes open and they’re filled with something that makes Keith’s bones ache. “She had a job to do and if she ignored it bad things would happen. She loved us though, she loved us with all her heart. I know it.”

“Will she ever come back to us?”

“Yes. I believe we’ll see her again someday.” His dad’s words makes Keith’s skin prickle again, but that sad look in his eyes is still there, and Keith doesn’t have the heart to call him out on his lie. “She left you something,” his dad says suddenly, clearing his throat. He reaches on the other side of him, pulling out something wrapped in a deep red cloth. 

Keith perks up. “What is it? Let me see.”

“Be careful,” his dad says sharply, holding the cloth out of Keith’s reach when Keith tries to grab it. Only when Keith settles, pouting, does his dad slowly unfold the cloth, revealing a silver blade inside. 

It’s beautiful. Elegantly carved with violet symbols on it that Keith doesn’t recognize but somehow bring him comfort. He reaches out carefully and touches the flat side of the blade. It thrums, shooting a pulse of something powerful and warm through his veins. When he gasps, his dad gently pulls it away from him to cover it back up and Keith has to bite his tongue to keep from pleading with him not to.

“You can’t have it yet, but when you’re older, it’ll be there for you.”

Keith stares at the red cloth longingly. “What’s it for?”

His dad sighs. “Protection.”

“Protection from what?” Keith asks. His dad never answers him. 

* * *

From then on out, Keith and his dad travel to the cabin for a getaway every summer. Keith doesn’t see or meet anyone from the cabin on top of the hill until he’s ten years old. 

But when he’s eight Keith meets a wolf.

* * *

He’s playing pretend by himself in the woods behind his cabin. He’s not too deep in, he can still hear the country music playing on his dad’s radio and smell meat cooking on the grill, but he’s far enough that he’s able to feel like he’s alone, which is essential when one is pretending that they’re stranded on an alien planet, forced to find their own means for survival in an unknown wilderness. 

His dad tells him he’s been watching too much Star Trek lately. Keith thinks the idea of too much Star Trek is just silly. 

Keith prowls through the woods, inspecting alien plants and alien rocks and alien dirt. He discovered this past year in school that if he thinks really, really hard about being silent and unseen, people have a hard time finding him. He’s used it to his advantage several times to hide from the bully who likes to push and scream at him still, or to make his teachers look past him when they’re looking for someone to call on to answer a question. He’s using it now, pretending it’s huge monstrous aliens he’s hiding from instead of boring school woes. 

The wolf doesn’t stand a chance. Keith sees it before it sees him as he stumbles past some bushes-  _ alien _ bushes- and right into a creek bed, freezing when he spots the huge black shape on the other side of the creek, leaning down to drink from it. At first Keith thinks it must be a bear and he’s about to be eaten. But then he notices the longer nose, large paws, and the perked tail. It’s a dog, but a dog larger than anything Keith’s ever seen before. 

He gasps, too distracted to concentrate on staying unseen and the wolf hears him, jerking and looking right at Keith. It growls. Droplets of water drip from his mouth back into the creek when it shows its teeth. It takes a step toward him, crouching low like it’s about to pounce and Keith-

Keith says, “I’ve got a sword!” He pulls it out from his pants pocket, still in its sheath, and waves it wildly. He wasn’t supposed to take it out of the lockbox his dad keeps it in, but sometimes he sneaks it in case he needs protection. He’s glad he has it now. 

The wolf’s ears flatten and its grey eyes widen, for a second it looks scared.Then the second is gone and the wolf turns and sprints away from Keith, disappearing off into the woods. 

“Strange,” Keith mutters to himself before he copies the wolf, turning around and running back to his father. 

He never tells his dad about the wolf. Sometimes, now that Keith knows to look, he’ll catch a blur of black dashing almost silently through the woods behind the cabin. Sometimes it seems like it’s following him. 

* * *

The summer after he turns ten, Keith is staring out at the lake, watching the water ripple with the wind and glisten in the sun when he chooses a new place to explore. He runs out of his room and out the front door, calling to his father to tell him he’s headed out and making a noise of confirmation when his dad tiredly waves a hand a him to be careful and turns over on the couch to continue his afternoon nap.

The pond seems to grow larger and larger the closer Keith gets to it. It’s a pretty blue, three shades darker than the sky. As Keith walks around it he can see all the way to the bottom in the shallow spots. Keith wants to see if he can still see the bottom when the water gets deeper, but he can’t swim, so he makes his way to the opposite side of the pond from his cabin, where a dock stretches out into the water. 

As he approaches the dock, Keith eyes the treeline, looking for the black blur he used to think he saw a couple years ago. He’s almost disappointed when there are no signs of the wolf from before. He knows by now it was probably a figment of his imagination, but that doesn’t keep him from wondering about it every now and then.

Sometimes he dreams he’s running alongside the black wolf in the woods, the full moon blazing in the sky above them as they chase each other. 

The dock creeks ominously as Keith steps on it. He pauses, fighting against the temptation to turn back. He’s ten now, he’s not scared of anything. Keith takes another step and the dock creeks again, it feels like it’s moving. Another step and silence. Keith lets out a sigh of relief, walking with confidence to the very edge. 

Keith peers down into the pond, squinting at all the blue. He thinks he can see a slimmer of something green deeper down, but the wind picks up, making the water ripple before he can get a good look. He sighs, getting on his hands and knees and leaning forward. His face is dangerously close to the water, fingers digging into the railing to keep his balance and he-

“Hey.”

The voice is so close to him that Keith startles. His fingers slip and lose their grip on the dock and he pitches forward, falling into the water with a splash. He sinks like a rock despite his helpless flailing. 

Before he has time to really begin panicking, he hears another splash, muted by the water surrounding him. A pair of arms wrap themselves around him and pull him up, up, up until he breaks past the surface, sputtering and scrambling to cling onto his lifeline. 

“Woah there,” says his lifeline. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”

Keith opens his eyes slowly, cautiously to look around. He’s still in the pond but he’s no longer drowning, instead he’s being held up by a boy several years older than Keith. A boy who looks entirely too amused at Keith’s near death experience, judging by the large smile on his face. 

“Let’s try that again,” he says, adjusting his grip on Keith to hold him more securely. Though Keith doubts he would fall even if the teenager takes his hands away from Keith completely with the way Keith is clinging to his shoulders. “Hello. My name is Shiro. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Umm. Hello?” Keith murmurs distractedly as he looks over to the dock. He wants out of the water like, yesterday. They’re still enough that Keith can see the water is shallow enough for Shiro’s feet to touch, which somehow makes the entire situation worse. 

“Hi,” Shiro says again. He’s definitely laughing at Keith now. “What’s your name?”

“Keith. Why?”

Shiro shrugs, causing Keith to claw at his shoulders in fear that the movement will cause him to fall into the water and to his death. “Because otherwise I’d have to call you kid-that-almost-drowned-in-my-pond and that’s a mouthful.”

“I didn’t almost drown!” The lie sounds pathetic even in Keith’s ears. 

“Then what was that weird flailing thing you were doing underwater before I grabbed you?”

“Swimming?”

“Oh, well if that’s the case I should let you get back to it then, yeah?” Shiro relaxes his hold on Keith by a fraction. It’s enough to send him into a panic and he wraps his arms and legs around Shiro so tight his muscles begin to shake with the effort.

“Don’t!” he cries, burying his face into Shiro’s neck. 

Shiro doesn’t laugh at him this time thankfully. “Sorry,” he says. “I wouldn’t really let you drown, you know?” 

“You better not,” Keith grumbles into his neck. “I’d come back as a ghost and haunt you for the rest of your days.”

“Well I can’t have that.” Shiro pats Keith’s back, attempting to bring some comfort to him. Keith is reluctant to admit even to himself that it works. He relaxes enough to pull back and look at Shiro. He’s smiling a Keith. It seems to be more friendly than amused this time. “How about I teach you to swim, so you never have to worry about drowning again?”

Keith hesitates. “You’d do that?”

“Yeah. I’d be happy to.”

“But...what if I go under again?”

“Then I’ll be here to pull you back up,” Shiro says, like it’s that simple. 

“I guess I could try…” Keith trails off, looking around them. The water doesn’t seem quite as scary now that he knows Shiro will be there for him if anything goes wrong. “You promise you won’t let me die?”

“Nothing will happen to you while I’m around. I promise.”

\---

The sun is setting by the time Keith crashes through his front door, soaking wet and dragging an equally wet Shiro behind him. 

“Dad?”

“Kitchen!” 

His dad is in the process of cooking breakfast for dinner and the sweet scent of french toast and bacon has Keith’s stomach rumbling. 

“I learned to swim today!” Keith proclaims, one hand still in Shiro’s as he moves into the kitchen. They both leave a trail of water behind them on the floor. “Shiro taught me in the pond!”

“Shiro, huh.” His dad half-turns from the stove to shoot them an appraising look and Keith feels Shiro’s grip on his hand go painfully tight. “And I take it you brought Shiro and the pond in with you for dinner?”

Ashamed, Keith studies his bare feet when he says, “Sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

His dad switches off the stove, moving the pan off the heater and wiping his hands on the front of his apron before he turns to face them. “It can wait until after dinner. You two should get yourselves dried off first.” 

Keith nods and moves toward his bedroom, dragging Shiro behind him. Or he tries to anyway and ends up jerking to a stop, his arm stretched out behind him still attached to Shiro, who apparently has decided to become a statue. Gone is the confident, patient teen that helped Keith learn to swim and now before him stands a tense, wide-eyed boy.

“You-You’re-”

“I’m Keith’s father.  _ Just _ Keith’s father,” his dad says sharp enough that Keith jolts along with Shiro. 

The strange crawling sensation is back, running along Keith’s skin as he watches Shiro watching his father. Keith has always thought of his dad as wonderful and amazing, but Shiro has an expression of pure awe on his face, something Keith’s only seen on fans when they meet their favorite celebrity. 

Eventually Shiro gathers himself again. “Yes sir. Of course, sir.”

His dad’s lips twitch as he doesn’t quite fight off a smile. “I have some clothes you can borrow after you get dried off since I doubt anything of Keith’s will fit you. Get changed and stay for dinner. I want to hear all about how you managed to get Keith in the water in the first place.”

“Yessir,” Shiro says again, and salutes his father before finally allowing Keith to drag him away toward the bedrooms. 

“Are you...scared of my dad?” Keith hisses as he marches them down the hall.

“No- well, maybe. Yes. A little,” Shiro hisses back in a stutter. “He’s intimidating!”

Keith laughs at this. “I can’t believe you saluted him like he was a general or something.” He looks back over his shoulder and finds Shiro’s face now a shining bright red. 

“Shut up, Keith.”

Keith laughs again.

Keith finds towels and a change of clothes for both of them, showing Shiro the bathroom and going into his room to dry off and change. When he comes out, Shiro is waiting in the hall for him, wringing his hands and frowning. 

“Hey.” Keith reaches up and grabs Shiro’s elbow. “You know my dad isn’t really that scary right?”

“He’s not scary, he’s-” That awed look comes back for a brief moment until Shiro shakes his head and sends Keith a helpless smile. “He saved my family during a time of great need a while back. I was too young to remember it, but I’ve heard the story so many times. It’s nice to finally put a face to the name.”

“That sounds like something he would do.” 

Shiro being awed and nervous around his father makes sense to him now. It is mirrored in the way Keith has felt about Shiro ever since he saved him from drowning earlier, the way he hasn’t stopped feeling not for a moment that Shiro has been around him. 

Years pass and Keith and Shiro spend their summers hanging out at Keith’s cabin, exploring the woods, and swimming in the pond together. The feeling never goes away. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked this, feel free to leave a comment and/or a kudos!  
> You can also find me screaming about fandom stuff at  
> [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/glaciya) and [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/glaciiya)


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